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!

LINKS committee training weekend

This weekend the IC LINKS committee are in Strood, Kent, for a training weekend. The aim is to get the resources and learn the skills required to perform our roles, as well as to meet the rest of the LINKS teams in London. I’ve learnt a lot about what’s going on within London District, and also got to gel with some of the new committee members. This was helped by some of the team games we played. In one, we had to go roam round the streets of Strood trying to find objects beginning with each letter of the word ‘ambulance’. It was tough, but for ‘b’ we lugged back a blue door from a cul-de-sac twenty minutes away, which won it for us. :o)

The venue
















The view
















The games (Polar bear!)
















The team

New CPR protocols

Gave a talk on ‘Poisons: First aid in the home’ at College today, which I can email to you if you’re interested. At the end, I talked about the new adult, child and baby cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) protocols that are being introduced. A major study in the US found that “half of chest compressions given by professional rescuers are too shallow, and chest compressions are interrupted too often during CPR”. On the basis of this and other findings, the new guidelines simplify CPR and call for an increased ratio of chest compressions to rescue breaths. This could save more lives than our current protocols, so please check out the sites of the Resuscitation Council UK and the American Heart Association for the complete recommendations (there’s much more than I’ve outlined in this short paragraph).

St Patrick's Day Food Fair

Next Friday is St Patrick's Day, and the Irish community in London geared up with a food fair in Covent Garden yesterday. We were there in our capacity as first aiders and got to sample some free Celtic delights, which was nice.

No one to treat today. Whilst we were on foot patrol one little girl went to the the first aid station for some treatment for a sore head, but other than that a plaster (band-aid) was the only thing we gave out. Was nice to see some friends before the imminent exam season though. It's gonna be tough.



Covent Garden

St John Ambulance Leadership I Course

A weekend of developing skills for leading and working within a team. We were placed in small groups and given a number of tasks to complete to the best of our abilities. There was a slight competitive element, and to be successful we would have to organise and plan quickly, delegate roles and support each other to fulfil these roles.

I found it pretty challenging working with a group of strangers whose strengths and weaknesses we don’t all know yet. It also felt a little bit artificial because during all the tasks we were under incredible time pressure, but I did learn quite a bit that hopefully we can apply back at Imperial. The best part though? Getting out of London for a while. The air was so pure near Chalfont and Latimer. The conference centre wasn’t even located in the village itself but way out in the sticks: no street lights for half a kilometre!

iFirst Aid

Recently St John has been receiving lots more enquiries about first aid courses and training. To make information more easily available, the charity has made available first aid audio tips recorded by a qualified trainer. They cover a variety of topics, including:

• Primary Survey (at the scene of an accident)
• Rescue Breaths
• Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
• Recovery Position
• Fractures
• Burns
• Bleeding
• Shock

The files are available in mp3, AAC and Real Audio formats, and can be downloaded for free at this website. Give it a go! You never know when you might need these skills. If you’d like to learn more just drop me a line – I’ve got lots of training books at home.

Notting Hill

Phew, Children’s Day at the Notting Hill Carnival was fun! We started early, but until lunch nothing happened. We had our meal in St Charles’, a psychiatric hospital nearby, before heading over to the temporary police headquarters to pick up our packed meals. There I saw something I’d never seen before: there was a live slideshow with pictures and descriptions of wanted people that were expected to attend the Carnival. One woman was allegedly working as an official steward in order to deal class A drugs!

In the afternoon things picked up a little. Our first casualty, who was covered in chocolate (it’s a tradition at the start of the Carnival) was a guy who’d had a bit too much to drink and had collapsed. We had to transport him in an ambulance trolley all the way down Ladbroke grove, weaving in and out of the floats, till we reached the treatments centre. He was unconscious but thankfully hadn’t sustained any injuries and his observations were fine. When he came round four hours later, though, he couldn’t find his wallet and phones. In the time it took us get to him, someone had stolen all his valuables. And on top of all that, he couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car. I felt pretty sorry for the poor guy.

I still haven’t read up how to use the main features on my camera, but here is a picture I took, along with a better one I got from Flickr.

The Rat Pack? Bleugh!

Another day, another theatre duty. This time it was The Rat Pack Live From Las Vegas, playing at the Savoy Theatre. Like yesterday, it was a celebration of the music of the sixties, but this time in the style of a live performance by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. The music was quite nice, though the big band got a bit grating at times. I’m just griping though, as the rest of the audience seemed happy, swaying to the beat like corn stalks in a field.

Dancing in our seats

Went with Kevin to see ‘Dancing in the Streets’ at the Cambridge Theatre yesterday. It was a celebration of Motown’s greatest hits, and wasn’t really a musical but just some live covers of great hits. I was a deprived child musically and didn’t listen to much music when I was younger, but even I recognised quite a few of these tunes. All the stars were covered, including Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, The Temptations and Marvin Gaye, and the audience was soon on their feet, boogying to the tunes. Even really old people with mobility problems were strutting their stuff, but thankfully the only first aid we had to give was to a lady who’d developed a bad blister. The show was loads of fun and the energy was electric. Go and see it! Gotta laugh at some of the hairstyles though. Did the cool kids of the 1960s really have locks like that? They looked as fashionable as the 1990s pudding bowl cuts! Not that I can talk.


Smokey Robinson, a Motown legend



















A pudding bowl haircut

Holiday!

This past week, I’ve been preparing desperately for a potential PhD, so I’ve spend most days (and some nights) in the library. This weekend, though, I’m off on a training weekend organised by the youth division of the St John Ambulance. It’ll be great to be with friends and to get away from London for a while, if only to Lee Valley, a place not reknowned for anything in particular. There will be two days of ‘fun-filled’ activities, refreshing our first-aid knowledge and giving us some leadership training. I sometimes feel I don’t step up to the plate when called upon, but I’ll use this opportunity to try and take some more responsibility within the group.

Hope you’re all having a good summer.

Yours,
Moc

Marathon man

Today was the London Marathon, and I helped out as a first-aider. I'm a member of the student division of the St John Ambulance, and with some friends was stationed at the twenty-three mile post. There wasn't much happening in the morning, and I even managed to miss Paula Radcliffe zoom past. As the fun runners came through things got interesting though. After a herd of rhinos went past we treated a man who had collapsed. He was seriously dehydrated and his pulse rate was scarily high. A cold sweat came over me, and I started to become cold and clammy, with a feeling of tightness around my chest. Fortunately, there were a number of doctors on board, and the man was said to be doing well as he was ferried to hospital in an ambulance. Seriously though, I have to get over the clinical-grade anxiety I feel whenever I'm asked to use any of the medical skills I've spent four years learning.

Other than that, the marathon was quite quiet in terms of incidents. I just had to dole out the vaseline and give lots of people leg massages. Not very nice, but at least I felt like I was of some use!

Gotta focus on driving now though - it's my practical test tomorrow!

Call of duty

I am a first aider, and help out with medical treatment in many theatre shows. It's really good fun and our services are barely ever required, so you get to see all these really cool plays for free. This year I've seen Fame, Saturday Night Fever and Mamma Mia. I love the seventies, and the cool (or crazy) dancing. Last week though, during the Phantom of the Opera, just as we were stomping our feet to the electric music and the chandelier was coming crashing down a final time, we had our first call - an elderly lady had collapsed of heat exhaustion and was lying cold on the floor. By the time we arrived she had started to regain consciousness and we didn't have too much to do other than take a quick history and examination and ensure she hadn't sustained any injuries or anything, but it was my first time being the senior care partner, and was quite nerve-wracking. Fortunately she made good recovery and was tapping her toes as we walked her to the station. Phew!