The old "what's the chopper gonna bring me?" feeling

tallaght01

A+E have just got a phone call. There's a chopper enroute with a sick baby onboard from a tiny town int he middle of nowhere.

There's a nurse there and she says he's struggling to breathe, but she doesn't know why.

Chopper will be here in 20 mins.

Deperately sick cardiac patient? Pneumonia? Bronchiolitis? pneumothorax? Sepsis?

I hate the waiting around. Always have. I don't like uncertainty.

Wow, I can hear propellors, that was quick. Hope it's a relatively well baby.........

Vorsprung

Hope the little fella's alright!

Traumadoc

Better to get some " heads up" rather than the "no warning priority 1."

Chunky Monkey

Hope the babba is okay. What's the difference between waiting for a chopper and waiting for an ambulance?

tallaght01

bigjimthefirst wrote: »

Hope the little fella's alright!

he;s fine. Bad bronchiolitis. But he'll be OK with some oxygen.

Traumadoc wrote: »

Better to get some " heads up" rather than the "no warning priority 1."

Absoloutely. Though tehy're much better at givibg advance warning here than back home. I think it's because of the distances.

Chunky Monkey wrote: »

Hope the babba is okay. What's the difference between waiting for a chopper and waiting for an ambulance?

When it's a chopper, there's an assumption that the child is REALLY sick, as it costs a fortune to transport. But when it's an ambulance, most of the time it's nothing all that serious. I guess it's because any worried parent can call an ambulance, but a health professional has to call in the chopper.

Traumadoc

To answer Chukys question : In OZ chopper transfers tend to come from longer distances 100-200km, generally, The chopper takes time to get there land load up and get back. I would often get retrievals from vehicle rollovers that happened 8+ hours earlier in the bush.So often these are "sick bunnys"
Also with paediatric cases they are often too unwell to be treated in the local bush hospital and can be quite sick by the time they get to you.
Also the equipment can cause problems. I remember one retrieval I went on where the patient was on two drugs by infusion pumps ( heparin and adrenaline). Unfortunatly the power sockets on the RFDS aircraft did not match the plugs. so I had to rely on battery power- this ran out halfway home. The patients BP "sagged a bit" to say the least.

tallaght01

Dodgy equipment indeed....

I remember transporting a baby from a rural hospital in the UK to the big childrens hospital, as she needed surgery pretty urgently.

This very good and switched-on nurse got me a bag with all the kit I said I might need for the journey if it all kicked off.

So, we hopped in the back, for our 30 minute drive, with a very sick but stable little girl. About 10 minutes into the journey the kiddy started to get very ill. She was going to need a lot of fluid, as she was loosing it into her bowel to the extent that she wasn't maintaining her blood pressure.

In these kids, you'd give them about 30mls of fluid per kilogram very quickly. You just draw up fluid into 50ml syringes and squeeze it in. This kiddy weighed 12kg, so we needed to give her about 350 mls of saline ASAP.

I opened up the emergency bag to get some syringes and fluids. I grabbed the big bag of saline, and went to get some syringes. There was only 10ml syringes! The nurse hadn't packed any big syringes! ****!Total brown trouser moment.

So, I told the driver to step on it. He jammed on the accelerator and we were going faster than I've ever gone in a vehicle before. The paramedic and I were being thrown all over the place in the back. The kid was looking pale and drowsy, and her mum was screaming "she's dead she's dead".

So, this paramedic literally started filing up as many 10ml syringes she could, and handing them to me like a conveyor belt, while I squeezed these tiny amounts of fluids into the 2 cannulas that were in place.

Obviously, one cannula decided to pack it in straight away, and I wasn't going to try and put another one into a clapped out kid in a 100mph ambulance. I was going to go introsseous if I'd needed to.

22 poxy syringes we used on that journey. The inside of the ambulance looked like a junkie's flat by the time we were done.

I arrived at A+E and a team were waiting for us. The A+E reg asked me how much fluid we'd given. I said "220 mls, because.......". Then he went into a big strop about how this kid "needs at LEAST 350 mls blah blah blah". I couldn't be arsed arguing with him.

Totally miserable night. But the kid made it to theatre and survived. I helped out at the resus in A+E...so the ambulance left without me, just to cap off a crappy night.

It was my first ever patient transport, and my worst. I'm now totally mental about cheking my equipment. My colleagues htink I have OCD.

Chunky Monkey

All I can say to the two above posts is yikes :eek:

And thanks for answering my question

godhatesme

So that must have been fun on the chopper,
hope the baby had a crash helmet incase it fell off the back of the bike!

Is that the worst joke ever????? I think it is!!!!!!!