Another day at work

The Influx

You hear them before you see them, the first wave of ambulances hit there must have been about 25 ambulances that were unloading into the decontamination tent and then there was a queue going right round to the other side of the hospital Sam and I were the first Paramedics to unload there patients as I started the decontamination process of my patient Sam started the hand off "this is Sam Thompson he's 34 years old, 2nd and 3rd degree burns covering at least 40% of his body with chemical burns to his hands, face and airway, gcs has been 15 throughout, pulse 96 bp 120/80 sats are at 97% on 10 liters of O2 he's had 10mg of morphine and 2 liters of saline." As Sam just finished her handover I came out the other side of the decontamination tent with the patient, as we wheeled him into Resus 3 and got him transferred onto a gurney we removed the sheets from our trolley wiped it down and loaded it back into the back of the ambulance restocked our kit bag and both ran round to the cab where I resumed my normal seat of the drivers seat, I switched on the siren and the blue lights, and started to drive back towards the scene.

As I pushed the ambulance to go faster and faster I was soon hitting speeds in excess of 80mph, wanting to get back to the scene as quick as possible to get more patients the treatment that they so desperately need, as we arrived back on scene Sam grabbed her radio to let control that we were back on scene "3007 to control" "go ahead 3007" "we are back on scene at the chemical plant, we're moving back to the treatment/triage area, over" "that's all received" as we jumped out of the cab and got our kit from the side door a police officer who'd we'd seen as first on scene was now sat in the red triage area waiting for immediate transfer to hospital as we went over and started running a bolus of saline through him and put an oxygen mask on we started getting a few details about the chemicals through we knew the name Dinitrogen Trioxide which was nothing I've ever heard of, but as soon as Sam heard the name she looked like she'd seen a bad memory....