The curse of the observer

Well I have been working the last two days at a different station and have had an observer out with us for both days (same person). Now any of you who know about observing will be bored with this bit, but for those of you who don't sit back and relax. Observing is when a third person rides along on the vehicle to gain either clinical experience or exposure in relation to pre hospital care. The observer we had with us had been out before on the RRU (Rapid Response Unit - single crewed Paramedic vehicle) but had limited experience on an AEU (Double crewed Accident and Emergency Unit Ambulance). Now observing shifts are one of two things, you are either sitting on stand by all day waiting on the phone/ radio to go or you are non stop with quality calls.

Well on the first day (I was attending = looking after the patients), we started our shift at 1500hrs and were due to finish at 0100hrs. We were dispatched to an urgent call (This means a Doctor has assessed the patient at home and allocated a timed response to get into hospital). En route to this call we were diverted to a Red call (Emergency response which has 8 minutes for us to get there), we arrived within 4 minutes of the call and treated the patient and transported him to hospital, and this is how it went for most of the evening, being sent to one call and getting diverted for a more serious call whilst en route. One of the more interesting calls was a call roll over in a busy city street, the car had struck two pedestrian's before ending up on its roof. When we turned up as the 3rd crew we were greeted with fire engines, police cars and two ambulances, our observer was amaizing (now she is a first aider so is used to dealing with patients, but not like these ones) my colleague and I would bark out our requests and she would go off and get what we needed. We eventually managed to get our first meal break at 2230hrs (supposed to have been at 1830hrs) We get our final call to the other end of the city at 2345 for a patient with difficulty in breathing, and are told that the RRU is also attending, when we arrive the RRU is as we were told in attendance and had stabilised the patient and we continued his treatment and transported him to the hospital.

The second shift started with much the same, check the vehicle, try and grab a coffee......no thought of kettle on = phone ringing, and off we go again lights and sirens going for a patient fitting on a bus, now I am driving today so the observer is sitting up front with me as my partner quite happily sits in the back so that the observer can get a full rounded experience of going to calls and seeing the traffic issues faced by responding crews. Once again our observer slotted in well and was back and forward fetching equipment and setting things up etc, we passed a standby (Requested a resus team be waiting in the Emergency Department) to the hospital and set of with the patient and mother in the vehicle, lights and sirens going again. The rest of the shift was uneventful, but fairly steady and we managed to get finished again on time......very unusual for a 1am finish.

So all I can say is that the curse of the observer may not always be the case!