Since delivering my first baby, my Call Taking Ambition has moved on to the next item on the list: the Embarrassing Sexual Accident. This was fulfilled late on a Saturday night, when I received a call from a rather shamefaced, tearful gentleman in a rather embarrassing predictament. The man’s girlfriend had “got a bit carried away” with a vibrator and now the offending sex aid was lodged deep inside his anal passage. Understandably, he was extremely ashamed of the mess he had got himself into. I tried to convince him that we see this kind of thing every day and in no way would the A+E staff, ambulance crew and entire population of Nee Naw Control be sniggering about this until the end of the shift. I wish this were true, but in fact such incidents aren’t that common, at least from an ambulance point of view (I suspect the majority of those thus afflicted go to A+E by taxi, thus reducing the number of people they have to explain the problem to). His was, in fact, the first lost vibrator I have encountered in my six months at Nee Naw Control (a few months ago, the person next to me took a call about a hairspray can stuck in a vagina, but that is as close as I’ve got), but I didn’t think it would be prudent to share this fact with him, nor exclaim “All the way up! That’s kind of impressive!” Neither did I ask the question which was on everyone’s lips for the rest of the night, which was “Is the vibrator still switched on?”
Anyway, the poor man told me that the embarassment was too much, and that he couldn’t face waking up his small children and facing an inquisition from them (the perpetrating girlfriend had left the premises, leaving him right in the lurch) and that he would try to remove it himself (I didn’t enquire how). I suggested that he ring NHS Direct for advice. I don’t suppose they were able to help; I just wanted revenge on them for continually putting rubbish calls through to us. (But that’s a whole new post…)
About an hour later, the man rang back and came through to Freda, sitting a few desks down from me. He had conceded defeat and the call priority had now gone up from a Green 2 (bottom of the tree) “Object Stuck” to a Red 3 (high priority) “Dangerous Haemorrhage” due to rectal bleeding. A nee naw was dispatched (I bet the dispatch desk deliberately chose an all female crew) but the man remained very concerned about his children, whom he neither wanted to bring with him nor place in the care of his girlfriend or anyone else. At this point he let slip to Freda that his wife was away, and the penny dropped that his reluctance to get seen to was not just embarrassment at having the cast of Casualty poke around his passageways but the fact that when his wife returned, he was going to have some serious explaining to do as to who was inserting vibrators into his rectum while she was on holiday and their two small children were asleep in the next room…
He could always give it the old “I slipped and fell on a cucumber” line, I suppose.
September 5th, 2005 at 1:18 pm
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October 4th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
ach, he can just tell her he did it himself, that he’d been too embarassed to tell her he likes things up his bum (is plausible, after all) but, once he’s better, does she fancy trying it too?
Then he can buy her a strap on thingy that you can put the vibrating dildo into…means it can’t get lost anywhere!
silly man. if he’d been reading Random Acts of Reality he’d know never to try and get it out but just to go straight to hospital.
October 4th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
Actually, a bit of an argument broke out in the control room after this call, as to a) whether there really was a girlfriend (or did he do it to himself?) b) whether this predicament was more embarrassing when self inflicted or inflicted by an illicit girlfriend.
If it had been me, I would have called a taxi — taxis, unlike ambulances, don’t ask for a reason, for a fiver they’ll take you right to A+E, no questions asked!
October 5th, 2005 at 11:32 am
Hah ha ha! Just desserts indeed.
Great blog - will be favourited :o)
October 5th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
*screws up face* that’s got to sting….. the madness! I bet he’s the kind of guy who drives the wrong way up a one way street!
October 5th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
[...] Amused by some of the stories - check out this one if you have a few spare minutes. [...]
October 6th, 2005 at 9:33 am
Would love to see some of your opinions on NHSD - I work for them! I know some of the calls put through are rubbish but there are 3 main aspects to this:
1) we have our difficult callers too - and trying to get info from people in what is an apparent emergency is very difficult - so 3 minutes of our questioning and the caller still insists that the patient is not responsive.not breathing even when you’re telling them to SHOUT at the patient etc. Do you question further or assume that the road crew are better who can at least see the patient?
2) call handlers are not trained and not allowed to give CPR support/initial first aid over the phone. They are callhandlers not medical personnel. When the call is passed to me, from my own nursing knowledge (A&E 15 years) I can do so, but if the callhandler (through protocols) assesses something more than ‘patient can wait for a callback’ you as the appropriately trained personnel will get the call. Remember - A&E will no longer take calls to give advice and neither are they trained in telephone first aid advice like you. So if we can’t do it and A&E can’t do it - you are the frontline service
3) any idea how many calls we can take in a day? Up to 1000! how many of those calls actually come through to you because we have dealt appropriately and safely with them?
Personally I have sent two through recently that I know did not warrant 999. But when you have hysterical mothers screaming down the phone, one who was refusing language line and they insist that their is a non-blanching rash and the child is unwell, how long would you spend questioing that mother before you conced that no amount of questioing will get a reasonable response? if that is a meningococcal rash as opposed to the other causes of non-blanching rashes you have an emergency. if the child has a vitamin c deficiency and is just asleep because he is used to his parents screaming and shouting and can sleep through then - oops inapproriate 999 referral!
October 6th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
Sorry, NHS Direct! I know you do an admirable job and you probably save a lot of time for the ambulance service, A+E and GPs. I certainly wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at any ? meningitis calls put through. I have, however, had some stinkers of calls put through from NHSD, hence my unfavourable comments above. These include:
1) A woman cut her finger on a tin can. It was no longer bleeding but required stitches. She could not afford a taxi to the hospital.
2) A 20 year old man had stomachache and rang NHSD because our telephone advice service had advised him that he didn’t need to go to hospital. The man really wanted to go to hospital, so NHSD requested an ambulance for him, knowing we’d have to send.
3) An old lady had chest pain. She was put through to me, and I asked all the triage questions, and the ambulance was halfway to her house when I happened to mention something about ambulances. She lost her temper at this point and said “BUT I SAID I DIDN’T WANT AN AMBULANCE! I REFUSE TO GO TO HOSPITAL!!!!!!” and was quite adamant about this, even when it was explained to her about heart attacks etc. According to the NHSD nurse, she “had” to call 999 if the patient has chest pain, even if the patient says no. Is this true? We never send ambulances if the patient doesn’t want them…
I guess these calls are in the minority and it is unfair for me to pick them out and say NHSD are always putting rubbish calls through, so sorry about that!
October 6th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
don’t know about the have to for all - the context of the problem is taken into account when overriding a caller’s wishes. I had one recently with palpitations, chest pain and dizziness who did not want an ambulance so you then point out that no you may not want one, but you at least need oxygen and if you collapse no-one will find you etc etc. She then agreed (after I probably made her condition worse with worry). But then by the time she spoke to ambualnce control she may have changed her mind. When it is a child in distress (medically) or a psychiatric problem (among others) then if we feel it is needed we have to put them through because only the person on the ground can decide whether they are of sound mind or whether the child is indeed safe. Guardianship and sound mind issues come in to play and we cannot assess these over the phone. Some ambualnce control guidelines appear to be different to ours, but in general we work to the NMC code and patient wishes are acceded to.
as an example I had a recent caller put through from an ambulance control who was feeling a bit low and probably only wanted to speak to someone, but then proceeded to tell me he had a choice of using the knife he was currently holding or jumping of the bridge. This was a habitual caller and ambulance personnel knew him well. we had never spoken to him however and knew none of his history so guess what i did - yep put him straight back through via 999. as a caller stating he wanted to end it and with possession of a weapon I could do no other. Now if we had a case conference with those people involved in his care and had flagged his problems and knew his issues we could probably have talked to him and then patched him through to his EDT bypassing 999 altoghether
I suppose I just get a bit hacked off with the bitching that goes on between services when there’s no need for it - because we all have our problem callers. we also hear a lot about callers sent from NHSD when in fact we have vehemently told them that this is NOT an A&E issue (particularly toothache and the morning after pill). No caller needing 999 will call themselves ever as the protocol is that anyone needing 999 is kept on the phone and transferred by us (unless of course we accidentally lose the call). and just because they can’t afford it doesn’t mean they’ll get it - anyone who is put through for this reason would be pulled up for not utilising the system properly and it would be raised as a training issue.
i live by the system of one legendary A&E sister : if you have no money to get home here’s a pound - the buses start running in 6 hours!
October 6th, 2005 at 1:26 pm
I was wondering about those calls we get when the caller says “NHS Direct told us to phone 999″ — I’d already worked out that these calls are never as serious as the ones NHSD put through themselves, but of course I can’t turn around and say “NHS Direct never told you to call us, you’re lying!” You raise a good few points about it not always being clear cut whether a patient wants or needs a 999 ambulance, and I guess there’s going to be a few NHSD people who put calls through to us when they shouldn’t, just like there’s a few people at ambulance control who don’t always do their jobs correctly — these people are the minority.
October 6th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
I suppose NHSD website could have “told us to phone 999″ but agreed I would have thought that if NHSD callhandlers deem you need to call 999 then they connect the call, I wonder how many are NHSD told me to go to A&E - how do you get to A&E, call the BWT company on 999.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:47 am
NHS24 do the same to use in Scotland with the crap regard. I remember a man who called and quote was ‘Bleeding from his arse’ found out a week later about the dildo. Couldn’t stop laughing.
April 20th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Probably was a boyfriend but he wouldn’t tell emergency services…
April 27th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
Array