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Do you need an ambulance?

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  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    No I was more than happy to wait somewhere suitable ( I don't include a waiting room floor in that category) to get treated by someone who knew what they were looking at

    Point taken on that one...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Ta. Was just trying to make the point between good job and good service. The final result was some very good fancy stitches, the service however was another matter.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Indeed

    I wasn't disagreeing with your point about services and a good job though
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Nay, just implying I'm a selfish inconsiderate patient instead... :P
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    No I was more than happy to wait somewhere suitable ( I don't include a waiting room floor in that category) to get treated by someone who knew what they were looking at, but it took 2 hours to see anyone other than triage, even longer than that to see someone knowledgeable.
    When my grandad was dying he was left in a waiting room on a trolley for 36 hours. Nobody from the hospital even gave him any food (as he hadn't been admitted yet). He died a few days later.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Ta. Was just trying to make the point between good job and good service. The final result was some very good fancy stitches, the service however was another matter.

    I found this as well. Had to wait from a Thursday evening to Friday afternoon for a small operation, all that time I had to go without anything to eat or drink.:(
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Nay, just implying I'm a selfish inconsiderate patient instead... :P

    :yes:


    :p
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hee Hee, you're looking in the wrong place for sympathy for that one, because of problems with the operating list they had the following weekend when I ended up going back I was starved for 28 hours before the operation, got back to the ward at midnight and they tried to tell me there's was no food 'til breakfast. When I threatened to scream, shout, cry or break into their vending machine they found me some....
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    And just for the record, I'm a lovely patient when you're vaguely nice to me.

    I just get evil if you're not!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hee Hee, you're looking in the wrong place for sympathy for that one, because of problems with the operating list they had the following weekend when I ended up going back I was starved for 28 hours before the operation, got back to the ward at midnight and they tried to tell me there's was no food 'til breakfast. When I threatened to scream, shout, cry or break into their vending machine they found me some....

    What made it worse was that I was ina ward on my own and the ladies would come around asking me if I wanted some breakfast or lunch.:yeees: And they said 'oh you could go home, but you can't.':grump:
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    On your own beats a ward surrounded with people eating anyday, trust me!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    because of problems with the operating list

    aka it was overbooked by the surgeon...
    they tried to tell me there's was no food 'til breakfast

    aka "I can't be arsed to nip down to the canteen where they have meals available for this kind of scenario
    When I threatened to scream, shout, cry or break into their vending machine they found me some....

    aka "Oh shit, we've got a complainer here"
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Spot on, except it was the weekend emergency list, so they've got no idea what it's going to be until the stuff comes through the door, so you can't really blame them.

    I now have something along the lines of 'can be a stroppy cow' on my notes apparently, which isn't necessarily a bad thing!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Spot on, except it was the weekend emergency list, so they've got no idea what it's going to be until the stuff comes through the door, so you can't really blame them.

    Yeah you can because it's entirely predictable, as I once proved to a few disbelieving surgeons. They also should look at the type of case coming in because there are other ways of treating them which don't leave the poor bugger sitting on a ward, starved, waiting for surgery.

    Yours was such a low priority that they could, possibly (not knowing all the details) have sent you home/fed you and done the op on an elective list on the Monday.
    I now have something along the lines of 'can be a stroppy cow' on my notes apparently, which isn't necessarily a bad thing!

    It won't be that obvious, you have access to your notes now ;)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It's not that far off, well certainly on my notes in the other hospital, and I was only 15 on that occasion! The fools left me with my notes, it wasn't like I was going to sit them on my lap and not look at them now was I?

    Nurse came over and saw me, got all flustered and took them away pronto.

    I still maintain that I should have gone home and come back as an elective on Monday, but apparently the lists that week were full so I would have gone on the emergency list on the Monday instead. I did slightly pity the surgeon I laid into (I was hungry and scared, I accept little responsibilty for what I said) because I was exactly the same place on the list as he had said I would be, but the previous 2 didn't quite go to plan.

    They were doing their utmost to get mine done asap so I had the best chance of getting back to uni.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It won't be that obvious, you have access to your notes now ;)

    Although there is the other angle, ' it won't be that obvious, it'll be in a medics handwriting' :p
    but as my mum's a dentist I learnt to read that a long time ago!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ... anything which you cannot read, or is abbreviated, must be explained.

    Takes all the fun out of writing in notes these days :)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Assuming I'd requested to see them, which I hadn't, I was just be an 'obnoxious' nosey teenager, not to mention probably 'obstreperous' (sp) too. The person who wrote that bit of my notes must have been into long words!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    To be fair not all uses of ambulance are always so defensible
    One of our more regular jobs is to the Newham Mental Health Unit (MHU). It is one of the more bizarre side effects of the way that the NHS is structured in that while the MHU shares a physical site with Newham hospital, they are completely different trusts.

    As each trust has it's own portering staff, if a patient needs to be moved from the MHU to A&E... they call an ambulance.

    So we get calls to patients who need to be moved a grand total of 400 yards down the road. I've worked in hospitals where you would need to wheel patients on trollies for longer distances just to get them to the wards. Unfortunately neither Trust will take responsibility for wheeling patients between the two buildings.

    It doesn't help that I'm not enamoured of the medical care of people in the MHU...

    Sometimes we will be called for something as simple as a chest infection, or that the patient needs blood tests or an x-ray. Sometimes you will go to something that sounds 'genuine', but which ends up being something simple.

    Take for example the last time I went there. The patient was a young girl and her diagnosis was 'Pulmonary Embolism', now this is a serious and life-threatening illness, it is a clot on the lungs which causes severe difficulty in breathing and shock.

    This patient however had none of the risk factors or symptoms for this. She was shaking like a person with Parkinsons disease but her vital signs were all normal. Without turning this post into a list of symptoms found and not found she had nothing that suggested an embolism. She had also been in this state for a couple of days.

    It looked to me like a toxic amount of one of her anti-psychotics.

    Oh well, 400 yards later and she was safely in A&E where they quickly ruled out an embolism and sent her back to the MHU with one of the private contract ambulances. I'd be interested to see how much that trip cost the hospital.

    The cause of her illness?

    A higher than normal level of anti-psychotic in her blood.

    Taken from a recent http://randomreality.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/11

    (which to be fair shows that 99.9% of ambulance work is pretty efficient and much of that which isn't is due to the great British public, rather than the NHS
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Don't you just love some managers :mad:
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