Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Bad News and a Broken Arm

As I thought, my paramedic application has failed. It was my own fault really, but they've changed the selection process for this round of applications and I hadn't realised. My training officer is steaming mad. Not with me, but because the selection process seems to keep changing from course to course. Still, I know what to do for next time now.....I think.

Anyway, it's been a while since I blogged about a job, so here's one I did yesterday.

We were called to a school where 11 year old Emma had been accidentally pushed into a wall when one of her friends fell over. She'd hit the wall with her hand, and heard a crack in her wrist. Emma was petrified because she'd never been in an ambulance or been to hospital before.

I reassured her, and gently felt the injured wrist. I thought I could feel a deformity in the bone, so I carefully applied a sling and we took her out to the ambulance. The school was having a job getting hold of mum, so they sent a teacher along with us. we stopped by reception on the way out to get a print out of the girl's details so I could book her in (she couldn't remember all the details we needed) and they told us they'd just got hold of mum, and she would meet us at the hospital.

On the way to hospital, I tried to distract Emma from her injury by talking about favourite subjects at school and television programmes. It was at this point I realised I need to watch some kids TV so I know what they're talking about!

At hospital, I handed over to the nurse, ensuring she knew that Emma was really scared of hospitals, then booked her in at reception. Just as I was finishing booking her in, mum arrived.
"What's she done now?" she asked irritably, rolling her eyes as if this was most inconvenient for her.
"She's had a bit of an argument with a wall and lost. It looks like she may have broken her arm," I explained, keeping my tone light.
"Was she pushed?!" She was clearly already looking for suspects.
"Yes, but it was accidental, as it was one of her friends who was falling over at the time."
"Oh."

I took her through to where Emma was, expecting her to start having a rant for making her leave work, but she didn't, so I can only assume she didn't mean to sound the way she did.

I don't know whether it was broken or not as it was close to the end of our shift, and our last job took us to another hospital, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was. I'll try to find out tomorrow.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What reason did they give for failing your application? If it was not a valid one then grievance it. They use poor excuses to fail people so push hard to get them to reconsider. If you don't try now what guarantee do you have for next time and in the future Techs may not be able to become a Para without going to Uni.

If your AOM and Trainer thought you were ok to go forward that should be good enough

9:26 am  
Blogger Steve said...

Anon. Thanks for the comment, but as I said in the post, it was my fault. They've gone back to the old selection process, and I misunderstood when it said I may have to attend an interview with my AOM and TO first.

Basically, my essay wasn't good enough as it didn't "tick all the boxes".

The selection process had been changed before I submitted my application, so they haven't changed anything since applications went in like they did last year.

I think my trainer's more annoyed with himself because he hadn't realised the change either.

12:13 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can understand that mum very well... years ago I broke my arm with the aid of an iron bar, wet grass and plimsolls (with no grip) trying to do some last minute practice of high jumping before school sports day. However, I did it about 5 mins before my parents were due to leave for a sergeants mess event and boy were they cross, more so with shock than anything else and they ended up spending half the night travelling to various different medical units before arriving at Rinteln, to finally get it fixed, at about midnight; not that they let me forget it.

Sage

1:09 pm  

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