Another tour in the books...

After an awesome holiday involving lots of friends, family, and a little sun back home, I had my first shift back at work on Tuesday morning. It was a little hard to believe that I had been away for almost 8 days (the longest I've ever taken off from my current position), heck when I got married I was only gone 4 days!

I was feeling more excited than rusty when I pulled out of our main base at 6AM which I took as a good sign, a little "absence makes the heart grow fonder" if you will.

Tuesdays day shift was relatively slow for the most part. The only real call of note was towards the end of the day. A very intoxicated female patient was jaywalking across a busy industrial street at rush hour. Her friend narrowly escaped being clipped by a approaching truck, my eventual patient however, wasn't so lucky.

When we arrived the pt was wedged underneath a parked car, seemingly thrown from the impact. As I walked up to her two things were grossly obvious, this woman had been drinking a lot, and she had been bleeding alot. The smell of ETOH hit me like a ton of bricks and the pools of frank blood were unmistakable.

The patient was very aggressive/rude/combative/uncooperative etc so packaging and treating her was somewhat of a challenge. Of course we were unable to differentiate between her actions being due to alcohol or a head injury so she was rushed to the trauma center as a Level 2 and given the standard work up. She wasn't in the ER at the end of my shift but I am not quiet sure where she ended up going.

I worked the 11-11 car on the Canada Stat (yeah stat pay!!). Despite lots of anticipation the day was fairly unremarkable. The weather here in Saskatoon was kind of the pits so the big celebration festivities in the park were not quiet as large as anticipated. The highlight of the day for me was clearing from our last call at just about 1030 PM and getting to see the fireworks as I was making up the stretcher in the ER bay. I stoped what I was doing for a bit and joined a small group of security guards, nurses, and patients who took the time to forget about work for a minute and enjoy the show.

I was pulled from my Thursday night shift on car to work in Emerg again. I've mentioned my dislike of being pulled last minute into the ER many times so I wont bore you with it again, I'll assume that you can imagine my excitement!

The shift was steady all night, filled with lots of new experiences and things I haven't seen before. Instead of listing all the neat things that I saw/did that night, I thought I would go ahead and list some of the things that used to terrify and confuse me in Emerg, but now just seem like part of everyday life.

- Paralyzing patients. The whole process of listening to what the Dr wants for drugs, drawing them up, giving them and then seeing the patient slip in paralysis used to terrify and confuse me but I've done it so many time's now that its like second nature.

- IV's on patients who don't want IV's. I've always been pretty good at starting IV's, but I used to have a reputation for taking a looooong time with my set up and selection of a vein to cannulate. After 6 months in Emerg, I can sit on a patients legs while my partner holds their arms and still have a large bore plugged in and flushed in under 60 seconds (not always but my percentage is pretty good)

- Bedside manner and small talk. This has also been one of the stronger points of my day to day practise but after interacting with 20-30 patients a night in Emerg (plus anxious family members) I feel more confident than ever when it comes to interviewing a patient or their family members.

I could go on and on but maybe I'll save the rest for another post down the road, lots of errands to run today before I go back on car tomorrow.

In the near future, I will be posting in detail my opinion about the currently -On Strike- paramedics in British Columbia. I started my EMS career with the British Columbia Ambulance Service and it saddens me to see and hear of so many unhappy paramedics who all want different things from their employer. I have a very unique proposition that I believe could change the outcome of the strike and possibly the future of daily operations in BC. I will post in detail why I think the strike has gone on for over 3 months now with ZERO movement towards an amicable resolution.

More to come soon....