Cruel to be Kind?

Kindness costs nothing.

Being based in a small rural hospital, we were part of the community. That meant patients expected a certain standard of care. We did our best to oblige but it wasn’t always easy. Some tried to take advantage, the majority appreciated it

An example : in the city, if an elderly person fails out of bed the crew take them to hospital, at best they return them to bed, check them over and drive away. In the country, we’d check them over and return them to their bed if they were uninjured. We’d make the patient a cup of tea and call a friend to see if they could come around to sit with the patient for a while.

The powers that be didn’t like this because jobs took longer and the figures on their computer looked bad, but we still did it.

When I first began with the ambulance service I was an Ambulance Care Assistant, a non-emergency transport driver. Even then we had memos saying we were taking too long when dropping patients back home after hospital stays. That’s because we took the time to settle them and make sure they were comfortable. We put the “care” in Care Assistant into practice. Kindness is free, if ambulance crews can’t show that, who can??

I recently called my broadband service provider to upgrade my service. The person who took the call was friendly, caring and kind. They listened and made me feel like I mattered, something that doesn’t happen often with large companies. If that kind of care can happen elsewhere, why were we being told we were wrong to make patients feel valued?

Many years ago I worked for a large mobile phone retailer. The company was based on a number of principles (I may have mentioned this before), the most meaningful one, the one that has stayed with me, being: Treat Everyone the Way You Expect to be Treated Yourself.

There’s nothing cruel about kindness. Now, more than ever, show some everyday and who knows what might come back to you.

Keep the Faith

Recently I was sitting outside a café with some other people. We noticed a bit of a commotion across the other side of the road. Some large seagulls were attacking a young pigeon, quite savagely.

I stood up and walked over to the scene scaring the seagulls away but, as soon as I turned away they were back. The pigeon was in a bad way but alive so I picked it up and walked back towards the café.

As I walked past the café and the others joined me, the pigeon passed away in my hands.

The people in that café must have thought I was a bit nuts, maybe I was, but I wasn’t going to do nothing. It may have been “nature in action” but my instinct was to try.

It reminded me why I joined the ambulance service in the first place – because I’m a rubbish onlooker and I wanted to help. It also reminded me of the many jobs we did that didn’t have the outcome we wanted. Even when we knew the situation was hopeless, we still tried.

Early in my career an older paramedic told me: “If it’s someone’s time to go, there’s nothing and no-one can change that, but we don’t make that decision!”. At that time the figures showed CPR jobs were around 5-8% successful, but everyone we were called to was in the 92-95% group until we had done our job.

Sometimes that was difficult, especially when you knew the relatives were watching. It would have been so easy to do nothing and tell the family it was over, rather than letting them hold onto some hope as we worked, but there was hope in us too, hope that this patient was one of the 5-8%, and we would never give up until
protocols said we had to.

We never beat nature, the lost ones were always lost but, to shake the hand of the survivor, the one who would not be there if we’d lost our faith – there are no words.

More Than Words

It’s been months…

Life has changed dramatically, and we’ve learned new words and phrases: “lockdown”, “social distancing”, “keyworkers”, “shielding”, “Coronavirus”, and more recent ones such as “local lockdown”, “covidiots”…… Words and terms we’d never heard or used before, now they’re used daily.

What does it mean though? What’s it all about? Why does it affect every one of us, everywhere?

I was on the front line for the avian flu “crisis” a few years ago. It was worrying as a frontline worker, A&E departments were concerned and hospitals had to put measures in place to handle it all. But the general public didn’t really have much idea of the seriousness, and it lasted a relatively short time. Coronavirus, aka Covid-19, is a whole world different, and it has created a different world.

We’ve all been in various stages of lockdown for months, travel restrictions are in place, people are fed up and, of course, there are the conspiracy theories!

How on earth in the 20th Century can (even slightly) educated people believe that a mobile data communication method (5G) could spread Covid-19?? It’s a virus (not of the computer variety)!! Why, when people are clearly dying, do people believe that Covid-19 is not real and think its some kind of government plot?? And why do grown people not realise that their noses are connected to their mouths and they must cover both with their face mask to help prevent the virus spreading effectively?

As I write this post, a number of cities in the UK have been placed in a state of local lockdown. A second wave has been predicted. Having walked city streets, and been in public places, I’m not surprised. Social distancing is non-existent, its more like social risk-taking, an face coverings are scarce. Many are being worn in completely ineffective ways. It’s very frustrating, but no one is doing anything about it. Daily, the government is adding countries to the ‘quarantine list’, stating travellers must self isolate fir 14 days if they are returning from any of them, but who polices that? People are holding protests against lockdown and being told to wear face coverings but, by doing so, are they not extending the need for measures they’re protesting about?! Nobody really has the answers, it’s new land and unknown to everyone, but casting blame wherever possible isn’t going to help.

Companies are folding on a daily basis, businesses are closing, online sales are rocketing. Will we ever see the ‘normal’ we used to know?

NHS staff are being hailed as heroes, but they’re not being given the correct equipment, in high enough quantities, to protect themselves as they do their job.

These are times like the world has not experienced for decades, centuries. Stresses are high, lives are being lost, not just from the killer virus among us. But we can get through this. Not by protesting about whatever is fashionable this week, not by complaining, and not by trying to do it on our own.

By simply following the rules; wearing a face covering in public, hand hygiene and looking after each other, checking others are doing ok, this will soon be nothing more than another memorae period in history. If we don’t, it will drag on and on. There are many of the rules that are ‘inconveniences’, but surely those inconveniences are tolerable for the short period of time necessary? They’re not just new words, this is all real and it’s happening to everyone, everywhere.

As those great philosophers, Bill & Ted, once said – “Be excellent to each other”. By doing so, we’ll see some form of normality again much sooner.

Then there’s Brexit……

I See Your True Colours Shining Through

This post is not the type of post I normally write. I started writing it a week ago, when Covid-19 was wreaking havoc in Italy. Now the whole of the UK is in lock down too. Phrases such as “self isolating” and “social distancing” are heard daily. Panic buying is gripping the country and creating scarcities of…toilet rolls and pasta, among other strangely random items. This is a very real threat to everyone’s health but, managed correctly and sensibly, the threat can be minimised.

As humorous as this may seem, and I hope these panic buyers are left with their stockpiles after this is all over, we are a country in genuine crisis and we need to think of other people’s needs too.

I was in the ambulance service during the avian flu crisis around 2007. There was similar panic in some areas, but nowhere near the scale we are seeing now.

Last night Britain applauded the NHS workers. People stood on their doorsteps up and down the country clapping. Some cities lit up blue in support too. This morning there are reports of someone who died “because paramedics left her at home”. Paramedics who have never seen anything like this before but are expected to know what to do. Paramedics who are out there ill equipped with protective wear, doing their best in an unknown situation.

Now is not time for sensationalism. Its a time to pull together, to recognise the work people are doing to try to keep us safe. Not a time for negativity and blame.

It seems to be a time when people’s true colours are starting to show: people refusing to stay at home to contain the virus spread, shops and other unscrupulous people trying to charge extreme prices for essential items like toilet rolls and bottles of hand gel. Peopled stockpiling those items unnecessarily to the extent that there are no stocks available for other people who actually need them. Today I heard of youths going round coughing and spitting on people, threatening to ‘give them the virus’!

But more and more, people are rising above this. Every day there are stories of how people and companies are showing support, stories of acts of kindness.

I recently spoke with a bus driver friend who told me of a wheelchair user struggling to get on their bus. Someone helped push the wheelchair on the bus then, rather than get on the bus as a passenger, they walked away. It transpired that the wheelchair user didn’t actually know them, a random stranger, not afraid to help or scared to touch the wheelchair lest they contracted Covid-19.

Another friend saw an elderly person fall while trying to walk up a steep incline near some houses. They were helped by three random strangers who crossed a main road to assist. Yes, we need to exercise caution, but we also need to practice common sense. At a time when social distancing and caution are very important, concern, care and kindness are also equally important.

Ambulance crews, nurses, doctors and all the support staff are working hard to cope with the Covid-19 outbreak. No-one knows how long the crisis will last, no-one knows how long it will be before a vaccine is discovered. Still these people go to work, knowing they will have a busy day ahead. But it’s not just about them. The country still needs to keep going – bus drivers to take people to work, store staff who put up with still rude and selfish shoppers, lorry drivers who tirelessly keep supermarkets stocked, Police officers, Fire crews….right down to the people who keep the streets clean. All deserve some kind of thanks for keeping the country going. Some coffee and fast food retailers were offering items free to emergency workers, but that ended when they were forced to close.

Most of you readers will know much of this already, but how many of us show kindness to these people ourselves? How many of us keep an eye on our elderly neighbours or offer to do shopping for others when we’re doing our own? How many of us say “thank you” to the bus drivers, say nice things to the supermarket staff, or give a thumbs up to the emergency workers? Now, more than ever, we need to stay positive. Boris Johnston was recently likened to Winston Churchill, and I suppose the Second World War was probably the last time the whole world saw times similar to these. We are all in this together, whether we like that idea or not. Kindness is free, and it actually feels good. If we all act together it will make this crisis a whole lot more bearable.

Please listen to the experts – Stay at home whenever possible! Wash your hands as often as you can. Social distancing and all the other rules were devised for everyone’s safety. To defy them unnecessarily is selfish and also puts yourself at risk.

During times like these we tend to see peoples’ true colours coming through. Are yours something you will be proud of when it’s all, finally, over?

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.

When I’m 64(ish)

Older people are great. They’ve been through a lot, they’ve seen a lot, and some have given a lot, but many don’t expect much in return.

“I don’t want to bother you”, “someone else needs the Ambulance more than me”. Both phrases heard on a regular basis by ambulance crews, often from very ill patients.

One patient was in the middle of a huge heart attack when they said that, as my partner and myself watched it develop on the defibrillator screen. They were put straight and rushed into hospital! A common one was the patient lying on the floor with a broken hip. The ball at the top of the femur can be fragile in some older people, and often broke off. The fracture was known as a #NOF – fractured Neck Of Femur. We’d regularly turn up to such jobs to be told “I’m sorry for wasting your time”, the patient in agony and unable to move!

Many times the patient had just fallen out of bed and, although uninjured, they just couldn’t get up and back into bed. Sometimes this was a more serious event and further action was taken. Often they just required us to help them back into bed. We rarely stopped there. Whenever possible, we’d put the patient’s kettle on and make them a warm drink, settle them before we left (most had catheters, in case you’re thinking the obvious).

I realised quickly that, other than a carer, we may be the only other people that the patient might see in a day. Sometimes we’d sit by the bed as they drank their tea and listen to their fascinating stories. All they wanted was someone to chat to, and we were there to care for them so it was our job to listen.

Sometimes Control would radio to “check we were ok”. Ie. They needed a crew for another job. If it was serious we’d go, if not, we’d stay a bit longer. An executive put out a memo once stating that crews were spending too long at jobs and suggesting a time we should allocate to each job. This executive had clearly no idea what our job actually was, otherwise he’d have not chosen to make a complete fool of himself. That memo was instantly filed in File 13 – 🗑️

Older people deserved respect, and we weren’t going to deny them that so the figures on a computer screen somewhere looked good (the same went for other types of call). We did our job and targets had no place in there.

I once discovered we weren’t the only ones that respected older people: We had been called to a house, somewhere in the middle of nowhere for a patient who had fallen in their living room (?#NOF) , along a narrow country road. As we got closer we discovered a long stretch of roadworks ahead, closing one direction of travel, under the control of stop/go boards at each end. As we approached, Blue light on, the worker with the stop/go board at our end Bbegan frantically talking into his radio. He held his hand up to stop us and we waited until a couple of cars came through, then he waved us on. The satellite navigation showed us the house was somewhere along the stretch of roadworks, but we couldn’t find the access road. We got to the other end and asked the road worker to hold the traffic while we did a u-turn and had a second look. We reached the other end and the first road worker flagged us down. They asked where we were looking for and he looked blank, then he asked who the patient was. My partner and myself were pretty sure we couldn’t give out that information “Is it *****?” they said. “Erm….yes actually”. Ah right. Again he spoke into his radio. “Two of our chaps are with them. They went up to the house for their tea break. It was them that called you”. It turned out that the workers had closed off the original entrance because of its location, and we were swiftly directed to the new one. The road workers had been checking up on the patient daily, looking after them.

Never underestimate what an older person may have done for you. Don’t be disrespectful. What you are able to have and do may, in some part, be because of these people. Simple acts of kindness go a long way.