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Podcast: Two sides of emergency response

By Ben Stickley
April 15, 2010 at 5:18 pm

Red Cross emergency volunteers are specially trained to act fast and save lives in a crisis situation. However, it’s not all about blue lights and ambulances. Emergencies come in all shapes and sizes and sometimes an altogether different approach is called for. In this podcast, volunteers Matt Smith and Louise Elstow describe how they used their skills and training to deal with two very different situations.

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Transcript:

Matt: So as I was heading back to Mitchum site, drove around the corner towards our front door basically their were two gentlemen from the building opposite just banging on the door. My initial thought was the building was on fire, or I didn’t really know what had happened. I drove up and wound down the window and one of their colleagues had collapsed inside and banged his head. So I popped up and grabbed my kit.

Louise: So we had just been responding to a quite large fire in Southwark, which is as you might expect is lots of blue lights and sirens, the glamorous side of things as people expect. And just as we were packing down we got another call out to close by. Just one house without any power, and the house is specifically designed for people with disabilities.

Matt: I was expecting to find someone who’d had a minor injury, who’d fainted, who’d hit their head as they’d collapsed, that kind of thing. Very quickly I realised that this was a bit more serious. He was in a very uncomfortable position on the floor. Clearly unconscious and a lot of worried faces staring back at me. Got down next to him, tried to get a response out of him, there was nothing at all. Asked a bit of history about what had actually happened from his colleagues and it transpired that he’d had some chest pains about an hour before he’d collapsed. So I checked him over and went into the training I’ve been given and actually had to begin CPR because he wasn’t breathing and had no circulation. Used a defibrillator on him which actually had to shock him once to try and get his heart started again and continued this until the London Ambulance Service arrived a few minutes later. The first LAS paramedic that arrive was a solo responder in a car. He came in, I think he’d had it radioed through that it was just a collapse as well. He saw me doing CPR with the defibrillator attached and the oxygen mask on him and was a little bit shocked that someone was already there doing it. He just told me to carry on whilst he radioed it in as heart attack. And all the time that they were working on him, I was actually still doing the breathing for him with a bag and mask.

Louise: So when we arrived there was someone with mobility issues, someone with a learning difficulty and a very elderly, frail lady. One of the first things that we did was to make sure that we replaced all of their candles with torches so that a) they weren’t at risk of setting anything on fire and also one of the most important things for the carer was that we were able to help her look through her medication and her mother’s medication and sister’s medication to make sure that they were all getting the right thing. She was quite anxious when we arrived that they were a bit behind on having their medication. We gave her mother blankets and made sure that she was comfortable and warm because she was very elderly and frail. And then we were also able to help her sister make a cup of tea and reheat some food. Because she had learning difficulties she wasn’t able to go in the kitchen without any assistance.

Matt: Yeah I was very pleased that I was able assist, that I was in the right place at the right time. He certainly was in a much better state when he went off with the ambulance service than when I got to him which is always a positive thing, and so far it’s been a successful outcome and so hopefully he’s going to make a recovery. I think it did make a difference because he would have been another five minutes lying on the floor. Still a very quick response from the Ambulance Service, but obviously five minutes not breathing, no heart rhythms, is a long time.

Louise: I think it was really valuable for that lady there, and her mother and her sister, that we were there to help her because when we arrived she was quite distressed. She was concerned about the fire risks and that they hadn’t had anything to eat for a little while. Although the food was there, she wasn’t very mobile because of her crutches so couldn’t be left unattended in the kitchen. So just being able to help them prepare some food, make sure her mum was warm, and that they had had the right medication was really worthwhile. I think that we were able to provide a really friendly face and some practical help for her. Without us, she probably would have got the help that she needed but it would have been a bit later and with someone that’s got other things on their mind. I think that actually its really nice when we respond to things and to know that you have made a difference to someone, even if its just making sure that they’re warm enough when they’ve got a power cut, that they’ve got the torch because before that they couldn’t actually see what they were doing, if they’ve got a young child or something like that. You do get a lot of satisfaction about knowing that had you not been there they might have had to wait a long time to do that or they might have had to leave their home and go elsewhere.

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Tags: emergency response, ERU podcasts

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Emergencies, Podcasts, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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