Memoirs of an Emergency Nurse Read Free Page A

the unexpected and also carry on treating patients in the main department.
    After 20 minutes, I went to the ambulance doors, turned the key so they were fully open and waited patiently for the ambulance in my gown and gloves. One by one, the doctors and anaesthetists from the hospital trauma team had made their way down to resuscitation and were asking what we were expecting.  I couldn’t give them much information, but reassured them that our doctor had been asked to go out to the patient at the scene, so treatment will have already taken place.
    Just as time seemed to be taking forever, we could see the ambulance hurtling down the main road past the hospital, its lights flashing and its siren blaring. I thought to myself that ambulances don’t normally go that fast down the main street so they must have been in a hurry to get extra assistance. At that point, we all took in a deep breath and didn’t really want to be there; we were there though and we had a job to do for these patients. Nerves needed to be pushed aside.
    I was the first outside to greet the paramedics and gain first sight of the patient and a short verbal history as they were getting the patient out of the ambulance and into emergency. I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed to know what we had to do to help the patient and get prepared in my mind.
    I jumped aboard the ambulance to assist with wheeling the trolley out and took a good look at the patient. The paramedic had sweat dripping from his forehead and looked worried.  The patient was female and had been screaming ever since the accident. She was incoherent and oblivious to what was happening to her. Her face was swollen beyond recognition and her lower lip had torn to reveal a flap of skin showing her lower teeth and jaw when she breathed. She was spitting blood bubbles which ran down her face. Amazingly my first thought was positive; at least she was breathing on her own and skin would heal.
    The young woman was unable to give any information to the paramedics and we were going in blind, so we knew nothing about the events leading up to the accident or previous medical history.
    We had visual confirmation from the paramedics that she had been ejected from the back seat through the front window and was found five meters from the vehicle on the tarmac on the central reservation of the motorway. Thinking logically about this and calculating the impact speed, speed of travel on a motorway is usually 70mph, she was ejected five meters away from the car so she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and she had taken major impact on her head. This girl was seriously lucky to be alive and despite appearing to be relatively stable, there was a huge potential to be hiding serious injuries.
    I tried to talk to her as we unloaded her from the ambulance. I tried to reassure her but it was a worry that she never heard any of my pleasant words and remained screaming and spitting blood.
    We got her inside the resuscitation room s he was on a spinal board and had both cervical spine collar and head blocks on. The head blocks are padded foam blocks that are placed by either ear while the patient is lying flat and they keep the spine in a straight alignment to minimise risk of further damage. The patient’s forehead is taped to the bed with tape over forehead and chin. This is essential for a patient who isn’t aware of their surrounding and at risk of further damaging their neck. The girl’s head was taped to the bed securely to protect her cervical spine from movement. She continued to scream and spit blood, her breath smelt of alcohol. The first to assess the patient was the anaesthetist, who suctioned her bleeding mouth and pronounced that her airway was patent due to all her screaming and that she was breathing on her own. She was still clearly audible, giving out a distressed wailing scream and ignoring our reassuring information. He attached a non-rebreather oxygen mask to her face, which covered most of her bleeding