“23 year old male, light headed, hasn’t slept”
It was one of those nights! Relentless from start to finish, no down time between jobs, no chance to eat decent food, horrible patients, a mix of alcohol and mental health with the odd contact with bodily fluid. Not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination! I was knackered, it was 6am and after 25 minutes of driving we made it back to station without a job. This was a bad thing in terms of finishing on time. We hadn’t had a break which changes timings slightly.
Right, for those not in the know on the ins and outs of ambulance services complex rest brake policy let me try and explain. On a 12-hour shift you are entitled to a 45-minute break. Of those 45 minutes, 30 minutes are protected and 15 minutes are interruptible. This means in the last 15 minutes of your break you can be given a cardiac arrest if you are the nearest available crew. During your shift you can only be given your break during your break window. This runs from 4 hours after your shift start time to 2 hours and 45 minutes before you shift end. All breaks can only be taken at the ambulance station where you are working from so to get a break you have to be sent by control back to station and once arrived they ring you to give you your break time. Simple! Right?! Now, if you don’t get a break, which is the case 95% of the time, you get your break at the end of the shift. The only difference is that your interruptible part of the break is at the beginning. That means on a 7am finish you can be given a cardiac arrest from 6:15-6:30am. From 6:30 you are finished. Job done!
Now, back to the shift! As I said, it was 6am. If we got a job now, we would be seriously late off. We sat on station begging for 6:15 to come. We waited and waited, seconds past, minutes past. We were almost there! After a night of getting worked to the bone we were going to finish on time. We also had the safety net of a crew that started at 6am who were sat on station so they could take a late job if we were unlucky enough to get one in the next 2 minutes.
1 minute.
45 seconds.
30 seconds.
25 seconds.
21 seconds…….the radio starts beeping and vibrating. Really?!
I got up off the sofa, headed out of the mess room, down the corridor, into the garage and pressed the button to accept the job. The time stamp on the screen was 06:15:06. The job was a very low category of call, not a cardiac arrest. The other crew had got into their ambulance fully expecting it to be transferred to them. I called up control.
“Morning red base, just been send CAD 912, just to advise, we are in our interruptible rest break and are Red 1s only now”
“The job was dispatched at 06:14:39, you were not in your interruptible break then”
“OK, then could you send it down to the early turn as they are on station and willing to take it?”
“No, I’ve sent it to you”
“This will make us massively late off, we are currently in our rest break.”
“That isn’t my problem, you weren’t when I dispatched it”
I didn’t bother responding. I was too livid. I can’t ever recall being so angry. So angry in fact I seriously considered quitting there and then. This is no life; enforced overtime when there is no need was not what I signed up to. I’m not evening blaming the system or the management of the system. I don’t for a minute think that this was a managerial decision, it was a decision made by a dispatcher in a bad mood. A dispatcher who is guaranteed to finish their shift on time, regardless of whether the crews they have send off are hours from finishing. A dispatcher who has had a 10-minute break for every hour they have spent in front of their screen.
We drove the 9 miles to the job through the rush hour traffic. To add insult to injury, our patient was complaining of having not slept. Funny that.....neither had we!
“What’s the problem this morning?”
“I feel light headed and I’ve been awake all night”
“How long have you felt like this?”
“Since lunch time yesterday”
“Are you fasting at the moment?”
“Yes”
“Have you had this before?”
“Yes, every time I fast”
It was a frustrating conversation. Why if you know the cause would you not do something about it?! What is a hospital going to do? What is an ambulance going to do?! It is personal choice to fast and part of religious beliefs but surely if it causes the need for an ambulance every day something has to give?! Anyway, that aside we headed off to hospital. That was 3 miles in the wrong direction.
At 7:45am we arrived at hospital. At 8:15 we left hospital. At 09:05 we arrived back on station. At 09:15 we signed out and left station. At 10:10 I arrived home. It was almost 17 hours since I left my house for work. It was just over 6 hours until I would have to leave again. My shift was 14 hours and 15 minutes without a break. Of that, 2 hours and 45 minutes was enforced overtime. What part of any of that is fair? What part of any of it is right? No one is accountable for this, there is no one to complain to and if we did, there would be no outcome that would change a thing. 21 seconds. 21 seconds almost made me quit the job I love. 21 seconds was all that was needed to leave me exhausted for the rest of the run of shifts.