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The Brass

Inspired by a good friend, I decided to spend two days in the NSW Ambulance Service as part of my Community Placement in the General Practice rotation. I know now that if I had done this in high school - I definitely would've chosen it as a career. It was everything I expected it to be. We are dispatched to help people in dire need when they need it - prioritising only them. Individualised pre-hospital medical care.

The dedication required takes me back to the laziness that has infected medical students: some of us don't show up to rounds, don't assist the interns and residents despite knowing that our help would help them and thus help patients, finish early and of course let's not forget those who do not show up at all unless they have to. The Ambulance Officers work 12 hour shifts and based on my limited experience, do not finish on time - making their shift closer to 15 hours.

As a medical student, it was very important for me to see the role of the Ambulance Service. I loved it and sparked my passion for emergency medicine not for the adrenaline but the principle of dropping everything making that person in dire need the priority.

It reminds me of all those people talking about Alternative Medicine and its importance. Yes, I'm sure there is a role in the care of patients, but when the chips are down and the most crucial physiologies in the body are dysfunctional, we forget our beliefs, how much money we have, whether we're hungry or what assignment is due. We are reminded of cruciality: family, loved ones, our future. Nothing else matters.

I was assigned with the Intensive Care Paramedics - Hardboiled, desensitised men and women who respond not through panic but through logic; something I sincerely lack in my career as a medical student. We had many conversations about protocols, management and interventions. Some of the conversations ran deep...

Have you witnessed any miracles?

They paused for a moment and I could sense that this brought back memories for them.

We have seen people die that should have survived. We have also seen people that should have died but survived.

That's not to impose judgement - they were referring to their gut feeling of survival rather than whether people should have died because they were evil. No dirty hands there.

The comment made by T-man, one of the IC Paramedics moved me greatly: Call it a miracle, call it fate or chance. Call it God. It's all talking about the same thing. The same phenomenon.


That will give me a lot to think about. I'm sure I'll be lost in thought about it when I can focus.

They came up with a nickname for me as well: D-Rok.. and don't ask me how it got to that.

You know D-Rok, sometimes we perform CPR not because the patient has any hope of surviving, but to give the family some closure. When we arrive at the scene, we assess the family and see how they are coping with their relative's decline. If we see that they are hopeful or want everything to be done... despite knowing that they have barely any chance to live, we still carry through with it. At least then the relatives feel some form of closure that everything that could've been done was done and that nothing could have stopped what happened.

Azrael

It took me a while to fully appreciate the gravity of those words. Paramedics are the warriors that fight the physiology of death - delay it by prolonging life until they cavalry is reached.

We, as medical practitioners, often forget the efforts made by others and as a medical student, I will not forget this experience with the Ambulance Service. Those people are incredibly important, crucial, quintessential.

The lives of the population in need are not in the hands of the hospital - they are in the hands of the Paramedics.

I honour them.