A number of cases stand out in my mind from a number of the shifts, some of which will make interesting blog posts, some of which will never make my blog for various reasons.

One in particlar sticks out. We’re called to attend a 999 call which has been downgraded to a Green call – an incident that requires a response without blue lights. We turn up and have a chat. The gentleman is in his 40s and has parasthesia from the waist down. He speaks very little English. We ascertain through pidgeon English and gestures that he’s urinating blood.

I’m not attending for this one, but something strikes me as odd. His feet are bandaged neatly – apparently he’s burned them and has been to hospital for his feet already. I look around the room and spot a box of tablets on the windowsill with a hospital pharmacy label. I point to them and he nods. Antibiotics. Paracetamol. There’s a letter with it and again he nods and I read.

His feet are injured from a scald and he spent a few days in hospital. Whilst he was there they noticed the complaint of haematuria and investigated, finding nothing and eventually referring him to a specialist in a nearby hospital. The notes go into more detail – his condition and pain seems unchanged from the time of admission. He’s also seeking asylum in this country but has had his application refused. He has multiple presentations to multiple services over the past 8 months.

On the other hand, he’s complaining of pain and does have some blood in his urine. His obs are fine and he seems comfortable unless we ask him about the pain, whereupon his face screws up. We have a quick chat amongst ourselves and we decide to try and see if we can get the out of hours GP to have a look, and control is informed. We explain to the chap who indicates that he’s happy with this – he doesn’t really want to go to A&E, it’ll be a several hour wait and he can’t afford the taxi journey home.

We hear a knock at the door and in walks a paramedic. We have a brief look between us before enquiring why he’s here. Control sent him. A handover is made and the paramedic asks the chap about his pain, then spends the next 10 minutes or so convincing him he needs to go to A&E, much to our confusion. We look confused but are happy to take him – obviously the paramedic is the senior clinician on scene here.

So we walk the chap out to the truck and drive him up to A&E. The charge nurse gave us a shitty look and we looked suitably apologetic as she tutted over the patient for a few minutes. She comes over to us. We explain what happened.

“Right, I see. Well, being here serves neither his best interests nor ours. I’m referring him to the out of hours GP.”

We left quietly.

I’ve had a few people asking me why I want to join the police, and while the answer is complicated and multi-faceted it boils down to one event. A few months ago I was out third manning with a paramedic. We spent the evening on the Rapid Response Vehicle responding to calls around Bargoed. It was a Saturday evening and most of our calls were to drunk people, although a few of the people we saw really did need our help – like the woman with a third-degree heart block who was rushed in. To top it all off, it was the evening after the day that Wales beat England at Rugby in Twickenham – what a day!

It was late, and we were driving up through the center of Bargoed when I spotted around a dozen young men and woman (mostly men) fighting next to a parked car. We came to a halt and Rich flicked the blue lights on. I looked out of the passenger window at the men who were almost lying on top of the car’s boot and for a second, they all stopped and turned to look at the lights…until they realised it was an ambulance car and they went back to their fight. Richard, calling for police backup on the radio, got out of the car and I joined him as we approached the group. The next few minutes passed very quickly as a woman was accidentally knocked over by the fight and when she went down her head hit the kerb. Rich rushed over to help, keeping her still while he assessed her and tried to keep the group at bay. The police arrived and immediately started chasing the ones running away, followed by a second unit which came over and helped us make the scene safe – by this point, Rich had ascertained that the woman wasn’t injured, just very, very drunk.

What really made me concerned was how I reacted – it was an uncomfortable and volatile situation and I shrank back from it. I wasn’t much use to Rich, and I hated that. I hated being that uncomfortable with that situation.

I’ve faced this before. Most relevantly when dealing with casualties in Mountain Rescue – theory and classroom exercises will only take you so far, and when faced with a real, live person, with complex problems that don’t quite fit the textbook…

So, realising that I needed something that I wasn’t getting – experience – I went looking for it. The ambulance service provided the ideal place to get that experience and meet my innate need to help people – the First Responder scheme. In a very short period of time, I got more experience than I had in my entire time in Mountain Rescue. Over two years several things have happened. I’ve had a lot more experience of dealing with people – sufficiently so that I’m comfortable with dealing with casualties now. The second thing is that my role in the team has changed. I’ve still got my qualification with Mountain Rescue, but recently I (along with two others) started training to be Party Leaders – consider it the management track within Mountain Rescue.

Those two things coupled together meant that I needed experience of dealing with situations where I had to establish control and to lead people – something that working with the Police would be great for. Of course, I couldn’t do all of the things that I do – I’d need an extra 8 hours in every day. Conveniently, I’m tired of the politics of the Ambulance service and had decided to leave anyway.

So there it is.