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News focus: 999 Sunderland
Ambulance crews in Sunderland spend 24-hours-a-day saving lives, often without a word of thanks. DANIELLE BEETON joined a night-shift to get a taste of life as a paramedic.
A drunken youth hangs 20 feet from the top of a building at Sunderland Royal Hospital, threatening to jump off.
Just minutes before, he had grabbed a pair of scissors from a nurse and slashed his wrists in front of her, before running out of casualty into the hospital grounds.
That was just one of the sights an ambulance crew from Sunderland's Pallion station faced on a typical Friday night shift.
The ambulance waited on stand-by as police officers and the youth's girlfriend tried to coax him down – while strong winds threatened to push him off the edge.
This was at 11.30pm, the second time police had been called out to help with one of the crew's incidents, and as they were gearing up for more alcohol-related incidents in the city centre.
Paramedic Dean Kennedy said: "It's very rare not to see a drink-related case on a Friday and Saturday night.
"Come 4am, you're literally picking people off the ground because they cannot even stand up.
"The police won't take them because it's classed as an overdose of alcohol.
"More often than not they are incapable of even walking to the ambulance.
"We have to bring them to hospital, which takes up room there. There's no thank-you and a lot of them vomit in their rooms. They're aggressive to the nursing staff; it's very frustrating."
The crew came across the youth as they were driving out of the hospital car park, after dropping off a 40-year-old man who had overdosed on a lethal mix of drink and drugs.
Paramedics were called to the man's home in Sunderland at about 10.30pm after reports he was suffering chest pains after taking prescription medication.
When they got there the seriousness of the situation unfolded.
The man had drunk at least two bottles of wine and had taken a dangerous amount of someone else's prescription blood-thinning pills, which are usually taken by patients who have suffered heart attacks.
As the paramedics tried to treat him, he refused to stop taking the pills, taking a further 34 pills in front of them.
Advanced technician Adrian Carr said: "It sounds strange but those pills are actually very similar to rat poison. When the blood gets too thin it doesn't transfer oxygen to your organs. They will just shut down."
The man was volatile and was refusing to be taken to hospital, and so seven police officers were drafted in to help.
They escorted him to the ambulance, where he shouted and made sick noises, refusing to be treated.
Adrian said: "We have not got the powers to force anyone into hospital if they say point blank they don't want to go. He saw the police and decided to come."
Police cars followed the ambulance to accident and emergency as a precaution, and when they got there it quickly became clear he would not be treated, even insisting on having a cigarette outside before being admitted.
Dean said: "He wanted to end his life. He has refused to be treated; we cannot force him. He's going to go home, we'll have to wait and see whether we get another call."
The crew were called to this incident after an emergency transfer of a heart attack patient.
The middle-aged man had suffered a heart attack while visiting relations and needed to be transferred from South Tyneside to Newcastle's Freeman Hospital as soon as possible to undergo angioplasty.
The crew's first job of the night had been in Peterlee, where a 37-year-old man was suffering from chronic pancreatitis – an inflammation of the pancreas which causes severe abdominal pain.
Saving lives makes the job worthwhile
DEAN Kennedy, a paramedic for five years, is saving lives every day, but he has never received a thank-you card.
Despite this, he loves his job and would not change it for the world.
"It's the best job." Dean said. "I love the feeling of going home knowing that I have used my skills and made a difference."
Despite saving thousands of people, death is a major part of life as a paramedic. But Dean says it's just something you have to learn to cope with.
He said: "In my first four nights on the road I had about four deaths. You get spells when there are lots and spells when there's none at all.
"It's not the death part of it that gets to me, because really you have to dissociate yourself from it.
"But when you get an old couple who have been together 40 or 50 years and their partner dies, their life has just ended as well, and that's really hard.
"You have to try to give them support, but you're only in their lives for a short period of time before you walk out again."
Dean says the worst part of his job is child deaths.
"No one likes dealing with kids with bad trauma, there's so much emotion flying around. It's probably the worst part of the job.
"We have a peer support service so if you have had a bad job you can talk to someone in the same job about it."
Ninety emergency call-outs a day
AMBULANCE crews in Sunderland have responded to more than 90 emergency call-outs a day during the past year.
Figures from North East Ambulance Service (Neas) show there were 30,404 emergency call-outs in the Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust area from April 1 last year to now.
In County Durham there were 43,402, emergency calls in the same period – an average of 130 a day, or five an hour.
On the night I was out, there were 56 emergency call-outs between 7pm and 7am in Sunderland – an average of five an hour.
From April, 10 ambulance trusts in England, including Neas will have to respond to three quarters of the most serious emergencies within eight minutes from the point the call is answered – a measure called "call connect".To date, the clock has only started ticking once details, including telephone number, address and problem, have been taken. Neas says call connect will save lives, resulting in shorter waits for 999 calls to be answered and helping to dispatch ambulances more quickly.
A Neas spokeswoman said: "These are all vital to ensure that we have a service that evolves and continues to deliver the highest service possible to patients.
"Call connect is a big challenge, but we are well prepared to face it having drawn up local performance improvement plans."
In preparation for the change, Neas has started a programme of service improvement.
One key change involves vehicle deployment, including the introduction of more single responders. This is when a one-manned front-loading car is sent to some incidents rather than a traditional double-crewed ambulance, to free up resources for other calls.
Last year health chiefs at Unison hit out at ambulance trusts, saying the single responders would not only put patient's lives at risk, but also put staff at risk of attack.
But an Neas spokeswoman said: "The front-loaded model does not present a risk to patients. Fast response vehicles can often get to the scene faster than traditional ambulances."
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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