Thanks for…..nothing

Patients and relatives sometimes felt the Ambulance crew that had attended them deserved a proper thank you. We were not allowed to accept gifts from patients or their families, something most of us were quite happy about about if the truth be told.

Instead, many sent in cards. In my area, these cards wod usually go to the main office for the area. Rather than send the relevant crew the card, the crew received a photocopy of the card and a stock letter of “commendation” from the main area manager…..signed by their secretary. I have a few of these photocopies and the accompanying letters, all say exactly the same, word for word. It showed no gratitude, no respect, no interest. Did the big boss even know their secretary had sent them to the crew? Were they even bothered? That’s how it felt when we opened the envelope.

But we knew that the originator cared, and that we had made a difference. That was worth so much more than the letter that went with it all.

My station won area team of the year once. I’m still not sure what that meant – no big congratulations, no rewards, no pat on the back or recognition…from anyone. We all got a photocopy of the certificate in our pigeon holes though, and we actually got to put the certificate on our mess room wall, in the frame we paid for ourselves. We also had to take it down each time there was an infection control inspection on the station.

During my training we were warned about taking sweets from patients. We were told the story, probably untrue and embellished more each time it was told, of the crew who went to take an elderly patient into hospital. As they put the patient onto the ambulance’s wheelchair to take them out of the house, the patient told them to take a bag of nuts for them to eat in the Ambulance. Gratefully, the crew accepted. On the trip to hospital the patient said to the attendant in the back “I hope you enjoy those nuts, I can’t eat them. I can suck the sugar coating off them but the nuts are too hard. It’s my teeth you see.”!

It was still the best job in the world, I said from the start that, if one in every few hundred people said thank you, it was worth it all, and the people who mattered were definitely grateful.