The phone rattles in the medical room. I reach for him quickly, my heart in my throat, my stomach clenched. The operator of line 112 calls, "We have an exit, Doctor. Car accident, biker, just behind the dam. ”Damn, I think, the first solo service, the first solo exit, and this. I hope I don't disappoint, I hope I can do it. I realize that it can be a serious injury, possibly a fatal one. It is a challenge.
The year is 1999, it is a nice, sunny autumn, a typical old lady's summer. The weather lured bikers to the roads to ride before the end of the season. And then, me, a young doctor starting with an ambulance. Half a year ago, I attested from the internship, but shortly after the attestation, I left this field and left the hospital. At the time, I had no idea that it was actually permanent, and that working for an ambulance would become my lifelong profession. I spent the next six months largely on anesthesiology, mostly in the halls, where I learned to provide airways and other skills needed in acute medicine. In addition, I also rode in the ambulance crew "as the fourth", as it was said at the time. At first I studied, assisted senior doctors, later I worked under supervision until my first independent service came…
So I put on a red jacket with reflective stripes and I run to the garage where our emergency car is standing. Shiny yellow-orange Mercedes Sprinter in all its beauty with superstructure, beacons, rescue blue star. The inner space at the back hides a reclining lounger and is otherwise crammed from the floor to the roof with medical equipment, medicines and other means needed to save lives.
We're going out. Then, in 1999, we rode in threes. The group consisted of a certified doctor, a nurse usually originally and the third in the crew was a rescuer driver with the appropriate course and practical training. This group was also called the crew, or "ambulance". Large and small ambulances were not yet common at that time, where the specific conditions of a city with a high population density and short journeys already required a different system of organization of emergency medical services.
In addition to ambulances with a doctor at that time, ambulances also ran without a doctor, but they were used more for planned transports between hospitals, where a nurse had to be treated on the way by the patient. These crews were called and called RZP or "ambulance". The system with predominant RLP cars was specific to the states of the former Eastern Bloc. Elsewhere in the world, especially in parts of Western Europe, an ambulance was operated and is being operated, as we now know in our country, in the so-called Rendez-vous system, where large RZP ambulances with rescuers, without a doctor and small cars with a doctor, or RV (rendezvous). In addition, in a number of other countries, such as Scandinavia or the Americas, the doctor waits for emergency medical crews only at the hospital on admission and the doctors do not move in the field in person. They are replaced by specially trained rescuers, sometimes referred to as paramedics. But that's another story. Let's return now to the biker trip.
I jumped in the car. We went out of the garage into the streets. The lighthouses illuminate a shiny ambulance, the siren cuts through the air and informs other drivers and pedestrians where we are moving. I'm concentrating and I look pretty nervous. Nurse Monika turns to me, "So, doctor, okay?" "Yeah," I said. The rescuer's driver, Martin, suddenly says, "Hey, Doctor, can you put a pipe in your throat?" "I can do that," I say. "Well, it's okay," says Martin, "we can handle the rest." It was clear to me that "sticking a pipe in my throat" wouldn't be all I wanted, but it reassured me that they were able to provide everything. and they are so confident. I stopped panicking and began to think logically again.
This is a very important moment in our profession, I would say crucial. Rescuers do not need to know in depth and in many details the specific medical field, as required, for example, by working in a hospital or in a specialist outpatient clinic. Rescuers must have a general overview, perceive the person as a whole. They must be able to orient themselves quickly in the environment they visited, for example, for the first time in their lives, they must guard each other so that they do not get into an accident where they themselves, they must be able to keep calm and cool and, above all, they must be able to make quick decisions.
We are rushing down the road behind the dam, when suddenly around a bend we see someone waving at us and a motorcycle is lying nearby, a young guy next to him. It's a good binding, over a meter ninety, a meter of live weight, a figure of a heavy athlete.
"Do you feel me?" I speak to him as soon as the ambulance stopped at the side of the road, and I jumped out the door and rushed to the plow. "Yeah, sure, what does it look like with me, Doctor? Oh my foot! It hurts like hell. ”I look at my lower limbs. The right lower limb appears to be fine, but the left lower leg is deformed, shortened, and through a ruptured and bloodied combination we have an open fracture.
My team started the treatment. Suddenly everything fell out of me, the nervousness was gone. The paramedic driver cuts the coveralls, the nurse inserts a cannula into a vein. I prescribe a good dose of strong analgesics and pain-relieving sedatives, which the nurse immediately gives so that the patient is ready for what will follow. After analgesia, together with the driver, we stretch the broken leg in the so-called extension plate, which is essentially a frame with a pulley, in which you can align the lower limb broken in the thigh or lower leg. Meanwhile, the nurse stops the bleeding and sterile covers the wound. The injury looks ugly. There was not much missing and the patient almost amputated his lower limb in the lower leg. After the treatment of the open fracture of the patient's lower leg, we place it on a stretcher, in an ambulance, where I once again examine it thoroughly from head to toe, but I do not detect any other injuries. But that's enough. We go to the hospital to receive.
My first independent intervention in the field turned out well, the patient was transported without further complications to traumatology, where he managed to save his leg. I knew in a euphoria that alternated tension, that I had done well in deciding to leave the hospital and definitely embark on the path I have been walking to this day. And I still remember the driver of the rescuer, later my friend, who at that time was able to calm me down in two sentences and showed me in practice the power of the human word.