Fast New Year

While people enthusiastically follow the President's annual five-minute meeting and raise their glasses of sparkling wine, hundreds of ambulance teams across the country drive along empty, snow-covered roads to catch the next call. And there they are not helped to carry heavy patients, they are rude and sent - this is their job.

On New Year's Eve, potential patients do not sleep, abuse alcohol, explode pyrotechnics and generally lose their vigilance. This is a special time for ambulance crews. New Year's shift means a hectic shift.

The basis of all calls is still routine: acute respiratory infections, acute respiratory viral infections, high blood pressure. But also on holidays, injuries increase sharply. People drink and then go downhill. Firecrackers are blown up and burns to hands and face. In addition, during this period, the number of suicides increases sharply. In the West, people settle scores at Christmas, but here at New Years. The expectation of a miracle weighs on some so much that they can't stand it, get depressed and decide to end it all.

“People get bored, so they start cutting their veins, hanging themselves,” says nurse Irina from Novokuznetsk. - This year, under the chimes, my partner and I pumped the guy out. The tablets were swallowed. He is twenty-six years old, a month ago he broke up with his girlfriend and decided to give her such a gift. Take your own life. First I drank the pills, and when I got sick, I got scared and called the ambulance myself. We arrived and washed his stomach. But we still did not hear gratitude. The ambulance is very rarely thanked. They are mothering more and more.

One of the main problems of ambulance doctors is that people do not think before calling them. You have to come with a low temperature or with a banal ARI. Instead of going to a doctor, they call 03 and ask to tell you what to treat.

“Temperatures of 37 and 38 are not for the ambulance, but for the polyclinic,” continues Irina. - We waste precious time on such challenges. Small cuts, abrasions that just need to be treated with peroxide and sealed with a plaster. Meanwhile, many people with strokes and heart attacks need help. Several times it happened that due to temperature calls, we did not have time to see a person with a stroke. Or, for example, people see a sleeping homeless person and call an ambulance without even understanding the situation. And when we arrive, they send us in plain text. After such a challenge, we have to get up for sanitation, and spend another half hour on it, although during this time we could bring real benefits to others."

Sanitary treatment is washing and disinfection of machinery and equipment, quartzing and airing. The whole procedure takes forty minutes, which may be the last for some.

“Most of the ambulance employees meet the New Year in the car, on a call,” says Alexander, a paramedic from the Moscow region. - I met him just like everyone else. At 11:50 pm we got free on the call, got into the car, and now it's New Year. I poured a glass of cola to congratulate the President, and then watched the fireworks and salutes being launched outside the window. Basically, the nature of the calls during the holidays does not change. It is still a high fever in children, due to the past epidemic of the influenza virus. However, they are added to the challenges associated with the consequences of alcohol consumption. Exacerbation of chronic pancreatitis, gastritis and drunken fights with stabbing."

If the brigade is called to a potential crime scene, then a police squad leaves in parallel. Rather, more often the signal comes from line 112, and the police are already on the spot when the ambulance arrives. If the doctors arrive earlier, they wait for the law enforcement officers. It is dangerous to enter such a house by yourself: the ambulance brigade has no means of self-defense.

“I had such a challenge on the fourth of January,” Alexander continues. “When we arrived at the scene, the police were already there. Initially, a girl of twelve years old called the rescue service. She said that dad stabbed mom with a knife. But when the police arrived, the woman said that she herself fell on the knife, and then, in general, that she stabbed herself. And the girl agreed with her. Penetrating wound, even deeper, and the carotid artery would be affected. But it was obvious to us that the wound was caused by another person. We put a pressure bandage on the spot, put on an IV and took him to the department, where the surgeon had already washed and sutured the wound.

Generally speaking, there have been more challenges in recent years. Previously, the dispatcher could not pick up a call from children, or when drunk people called. But in the last three years the regulations have changed. Now we respond to every challenge. There is more work for doctors, and fewer doctors themselves. People run to Moscow for a higher salary. I have been working at the ambulance for about five years, of which two years I worked alone in a shift. Just me and the driver. If it was necessary to carry the patient on a stretcher, then it was necessary to ask relatives or passers-by. In general, by law, the ambulance team should not carry patients. Patients are different, and doctors, as a rule, have torn backs."

The doctors working in the ambulance are special people. Constantly on the road, and always at the very peak. They are called at the moment when it is no longer possible to wait, when everything is decided by minutes, and delay can cost someone's life. They could have gone into another area of medicine. They would earn more and work more calmly, without such stress. All the experts we interviewed agree on one thing: they rarely give thanks to doctors.

“I went to work in an ambulance when I was still studying at a medical school,” says nurse Anton from the Kaluga region. - Yes, this is not the quietest place, but this is what attracts me. Always movement, adrenaline. When all the processes at the ambulance station are well organized, like ours, it is a pleasure to work. Yes, we often hear insults from patients. Threats, complaints, but that's just part of our job. It doesn't hurt me at all. Anyway, they will call us, and we will also come and help."

Anton was lucky, he celebrated the New Year at home. He took over only on the third day, and by that time 260 calls were registered at the substation in the first two days of this year. This is almost thirty calls per crew per day. As soon as Anton's colleagues finished their work with one patient, they drove to the next, and so on all the time, with occasional breaks of minutes to catch their breath.

“When there are many calls at the same time, the dispatcher decides to whom to send the brigade first, and whom to leave for later,” continues Anton. - If in one place the child does not have a very high temperature, and in another the person is lying unconscious or an accident has occurred, then, of course, we will first be sent to where emergency assistance is needed. It happens that if the dispatcher finds it difficult, then he consults with the team doctor, and he already makes a decision, guided by the described symptoms."

All ambulance employees say the same thing: for them, the holidays are no different from the rest of the days. They have a “holiday” every day, and the New Year is a normal working day if your shift falls on it. And doctors (all over the world, by the way) have a belief that if they want a quiet, calm shift, then on the contrary, it will be extremely difficult. So, if you want to cheer up a familiar emergency doctor, then just wish him good luck.