Life

In the interests of confidentiality all names herein are pseudonames. Should anyone be interested this conforms with the Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Professional Conduct(2008) in regards to Confidentiality.

I get a phone call last night. Its a Charlotte, a friend of mine, shes hyperventilating. She informs me that her boyfriend Sam has drunkenly punched a car and run off.

There are three reasons Charlotte called me -
1. She knows I'm a student nurse, and a more than experienced first aider.
2. She knows we are close as shes just left the pub we are at.
3. She knows my girlfriend is with me and that she is a qualified nurse(this trumps student and first aider).

So I leave my girlfriend to take care of Charlotte and I run off in the direction Sam ran. When I finally find him he is on the floor, more out of intoxication than blood loss. There is a fairly impressive amount of blood issuing from his hand. I call and ambulance and then notify Charlotte of our location. All the time attempting to keep Sam sat with his back to a wall so that he doesnt fall down and crack his head, and keeping his hand elevated(not easy and this chap isnt terribly co-operative when sober, let alone when he's been drinking for 9 hours).

Charlotte arrives with my girlfriend driven by Denise, a friend of ours(also a first aider).

The ambulance crew arrive in less than eight minutes. Despite how clear I made it to control that this wasnt a high priority call as Sam was 100% stable. They clean up Sam and fill out the paperwork to get us into A&E and call the police who formally arrest Sam for criminal damage but immediately release him on bail in order to have his hand checked out at A&E.

Denise drives myself and Sam to A&E. Where he is seen promptly by the triage nurse, then the radiographers in xray. We spent some time waiting for the House Officer to review Sam but eventually decided that there was no real damage and that his hand only required irrigating to remove any small fragments of glass left. So we left with a letter for his GP.

2100-0200 this is how I spend my time.

I have to admit that given how poorly my new ward is treating me I did need this night to remind myself that I am damn good at what I do and that I belong in critical care.