Many of my non-ambulance friends say they don’t like New Year’s Eve. Everywhere’s packed and expensive and you are forced to hug people you don’t like and then make your way home with a bunch of puking drunks. Well, let me tell you that compared with my New Year’s Eve, that sounds like heaven! You people with normal jobs don’t know how lucky you are. A New Year’s Eve of call taking is about as close you can get to hell on earth. However many ambulances you have, however many call takers you have (we had more call takers than telephones), you are never, ever going to cope. There were 1,825 calls between midnight and 4am, and 6,114 for the entire day. (To compare - on an average weekend night, I’d expect about 700 calls between midnight and 4am, and probably about 300 on a weekday.)
Broadly speaking, there were four categories of calls:
1) Alcohol Related Accidents
My mate’s got drunk and got in a fight. My mate’s got drunk and fallen down the stairs. My mate’s got drunk and taken some dodgy pills, and now he’s having a fit. My mate’s got drunk and fallen out of a jacuzzi. My mate’s got drunk and fallen out of a first floor window… It never ends. Some people grumble about these calls, complaining that these injuries are self inflicted and therefore not deserving of our sympathy and help, but I don’t agree with that. It is not like anyone deliberately has an accident and it isn’t against any laws to get drunk, so unless you think people should avoid doing anything fun just in case it ends in an accident, I think these calls are just as deserving as any other. On the other hand, I wish they wouldn’t all happen at once. And I wish I didn’t have to talk to drunk people in order to help with them. As well as the abusive ones, you get a lot that won’t shut up or don’t make any sense. There was one woman slurring so much I had to get her to repeat herself three times and I still couldn’t understand so I had to get her to put someone else on. She wasn’t even the patient!
(The worst thing about the calls is possibly the realisation that if I wasn’t at work, *I* would be one of those drunken fools…)
2. Just Drunken.
“My mate’s had too much to drink and now he’s puking up and staggering around!” Yes, that’s what happens, you idiot. He’s drunk. And if we send you one of our fully equipped emergency vehicles on blue lights, he’ll still be drunk. I realise it’s a bit of a pain watching your mate puke on a street corner because none of the taxis will take him home, but really, do you have to make it our problem? Do you realise you are going to have to spend the next six hours in A+E waiting while the doctor sees the people who are actually ill? Do us all a favour, and ring your mum to pick you up instead. And don’t you dare puke in the back of the ambulance. You do realise that it’s the crews themselves who have to clean them, don’t you?
3. People Who Don’t Know What Day It Is
Maternataxis, broken fingers, bellyaches… they all seemed to think that we’d got a special service running just for them and it would be unaffected by the fact it was New Year. I got a call from a man who’d rung a total of six, count ‘em, minutes ago, whose teenage daughter had backache. It may have been more serious than that, I wouldn’t know, because he’d refused to answer any of the original call taker’s question and hung up on her. He rang back to say he was taking her in the car (so why didn’t he do that in the first place?) because “she could have died in the time you get to get here!” and “your service is ****ing rubbish”. Cheers, mate, so are your manners. Don’t envy the staff who had to put up with that for the next six hours in A+E…
4. People Who Are Genuinely Ill
And of course, it doesn’t stop just because it’s New Year’s Eve. I felt desperately sorry for the old people with breathing problems and heart attacks - and due to the cold weather, there were loads of them - knowing that all the ambulances were out dealing with the drunks and they wouldn’t get a vehicle until one finished up at the hospital. I reckon that if you are struck down with a life threatening illness on New Year’s Eve, you must be one of the most unlucky people alive. Along with those poor suckers who have to work.
Fingers crossed that this is the last New Year that I will EVER have to spend call taking…
