A Fun Day at the Fire Station!!

I've noticed lately, that nursing school gives me so many opportunities to do things, that I would never get to experience otherwise. For example, on Tuesday night I got to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Never thought I'd go to one of those. It was just like I thought it would be though! haha, "Hi, I'm Jane, I'm an alcoholic." everyone:"Hi Jane". It was a very interesting experience, but I'm not sure what I think about it. It does help a lot of alcoholics, and it's cool that it's spiritually based, but... I think that they think that their "Big Book" is the bible... but it was a good experience none the less.

Then yesterday, I had my most favorite clinical yet! I got to hang out all day at the fire station and go with the paramedics and firemen on their calls!! It was kind of akward when I first got there, but I ended up having a really fun day. All of the guys were hilarious, and it was just funny watching them interact with each other! I got to go on four calls while I was there. The first was what they call a "BS call". A man called and said that he felt weak because of bee stings that he got 3 days ago... He was actually sitting in a car in his drive way when we picked him up, but his daughter couldn't manage to drive him on to the hospital? One thing I learned yesterday was that a lot of people use the paramedics as a glorified taxi service. I got to do a glucose stick on him though, and I had never gotten to do that before! Simple... I know.

Not long after we got back to the station, the paramedics found out that they were going to get inspected today by the state... surprise! So we went over to Station 1 so the rescue truck could be inspected to make sure that they had everything in the right place. We failed the first time because we didn't have pillows... haha. So, Chris just grabbed some and put them on the truck. So, if you ever are in Bham and find yourself in an emergency situation... while Chris and Vince are trying to get you to stop bleeding, and starting an IV, and putting you on oxygen, you can now rest your head on one of our pillows... but don't get any blood on it, because we're only allowed to have 2!!

We headed back and ate lunch and had some down time. We ate fried bologna sandwiches for lunch!! They asked me before they cooked it if I was a fried bologna girl, and I said sure, but I hadn't had it since I was like 8... I think I hurt their feelings! After lunch, we got a second call that a woman was unresponsive at a nursing home. So, we headed over there and when we pulled up in the rescue truck the firemen there told us to just go back to the station. Chris didn't feel comfortable leaving though without talking to the woman, so we went inside. But then on the way to the room, one of the nurses insisted that we take the woman to the hospital. Though she was alert and oriented x 3 and said that she didn't think she needed to go to the hospital. The nurse had called the woman's daughter though, and told her that her mother was unconcious and that they had called the paramedics, so we had to go ahead and take her to the hospital. It was funny because on the nursing home paperwork, they had written that she went into a full code... but they said that she was only unconcious, but was still breathing...? haha

Not long after getting back to the fire station, we got called on a third call. This one was an automobile accident. At the beginning of the day I told Chris that I hadn't ever gotten to start an IV, so our goal for the day was for me to get to start an IV on someone. So, it was sad because every time a call came in, it was like yay or nay, whether or not they would need an IV haha. We thought that this might be a possible IV, so we headed over there. One of the cool things about the paramedics, is that they really have no idea what they're heading to... all they know is the very basics of what happened. We got to the scene, and the girl wasn't hurt bad. She had just hit her head on the "oh crap" handle. She was alert and oriented x 3 and wasn't sleepy, but she felt dizzy, so we went ahead and took her to the hospital. We just did vitals on her on the way, and watched for any neurological changes.

We went back to the station after that and started watching "I am Legend". Or me and the leutenant watched I am Legend while the guys washed the trucks and cleaned the kitchen, haha. Most of the guys were married, and so they told me about all of their wives. Half of their wives are nurses, so they were like you know you're going to marry a paramedic or a fireman! haha. One of the guys, Jason, his wife works nights and so she always wants him to call her and wake her up. Before calling he was complaining and talking it up about how all he is is an alarm clock and a snooze button, and how he wasn't going to keep doing this, and they were all talking it up, blah, blah, blah. So then he calls her. "Hey sweetie, it's time to get up. You want 10 more minutes... okay honey, I'll call you back in 10 minutes." HAHA! Talk about some funny stuff.

I was about to leave when we got another call. Vince was reading the sheet while it was printing and was like, "All right J. Green! You'll definitely get to do an IV on this one!!" I asked him what it was and he told me a suicide attempt with a knife. We were all complaining all day that we weren't seeing any blood or guts, but now I wasn't sure... So we headed to the lady's house, and my heart broke when we got there. There were kids everywhere! So we walked inside and found the lady in her wheelchair, totally okay! There was a mixup... she was having suicidal ideations to kill herself with a knife, and hadn't actually done it. So, we went ahead and put her in the ambulance to go to the hospital. Chris was like, well, we can tell her that she needs an IV and see if she believes us! haha.

Then we had the problem of figuring out what hospital to take her to. She said she wanted to go to UAB, but UAB and every other hospital were on diversion for psych patients. The only hospital accepting psych patients was Brookwood. Chris said that it's always like this, that hospitals never want psych patients. She still wanted to go to UAB though, so it's considered kidnapping if you take them to another hospital, so we went ahead to UAB. And just to mention, UAB has the largest ED I have ever seen... it was crazy!! But since they were on diversion for psych patients, we had to wait until they would take her. Chris and Vince said that they have had to wait for 2 hours before with a psych patient. I think that's terrible and one reason that psych patients keep coming to the hospital. It's almost like everyone is constantly trying to tell them that they don't care... We didn't have to wait long until we got an assignment for her. When we got to that area of the hospital though, one of the nurses over there didn't want her to be there.

The lady has a degenerative disease, and was having some tremors. There wasn't a doctor over there, so she didn't feel comfortable with her being there. So, she called the charge nurse to see if we could move her somewhere else. They couldn't decide what they wanted to do, and were actually really rude to the paramedics, who were doing exactly what they were supposed to do. They had taken a history, found out that she had a degenerative disease... she didn't know the name of it, but she said that she has tremors all the time. So, Chris tells the nurse this, but she still keeps trying to move the patient some where else. She even called Chris an "ambulance driver"... yeah. Anyways, they finally decided to keep her there, and hopefully the lady got to see a doctor soon, and is feeling better today.

After that call, I decided to give up on getting to start an IV and go home. Earlier that day, Chris was even going to let me start an IV on him... haha. He even got all the stuff out and everything, but I thought that might be a little torturous! But I really really loved yesterday. Even though, I never saw a "typical" true emergency, it was a really great experience. I definitely am intersted in ER nursing now, and hope to get to do a clinical either at children's ER or UAB ER. We don't have an ER class or clinical, so we have to try to work it into our peds or high acuity adult if we're interested in the ER. But I have so much more respect for firemen and paramedics now. They do some amazing things, and are some really cool guys!