Happy New Year

How did you spend New Year’s Eve? This year, I went out to Central London with a unit of the St John Ambulance and paramedics from the LAS. In groups of three, we walked around Piccadilly Circus and Soho, responding on foot to 999 calls. As expected, it was quite a busy night and we did lots of walking, but fortunately we weren’t called to deal with any life-threatening injuries. There were lots of drunk women who had reduced consciousness or who had tripped over their high heels and hurt their ankles, but before 11.30pm we didn’t have much to do. Ten minutes before the bells struck for midnight, we were called to a house in a side street for a suspected collapse. Turned out to be a false alarm, but we didn’t make it back to a thoroughfare in time for the celebrations and fireworks, so it was quite a subdued start to the New Year.

Over the next few hours we had a variety to calls to minor injuries, before we were stopped by a man with a suspected ankle fracture, who’d been waiting for an ambulance for “decades”. Just as we were starting to treat him, another guy came running up to us, asking for help for his friend across the road, who’d sustained a head injury. My two colleagues went to investigate, so I was left with the first man, who was getting cold and increasingly angry. The second guy’s injuries were more serious, so when the ambulance arrived, it was diverted to take him to hospital instead which made the guy with the ankle injury furious. He was pretty abusive, and it was only after we told him it wouldn’t be tolerated and that if he continued we would leave that he calmed down. Not a nice experience. Fortunately, another ambulance arrived within fifteen minutes and he was on his way. We carried on working till 5am, and by the time I got back home at 7.00am was well and truly knackered.

Happy New Year!