Last night we were out all night, I think we managed to wave at the ambulance station as we drove past on yet another call. Most of the calls were either drunks (injured hand, asleep in the street, fall and head injury), Maternataxis (including one who was 300 yards from the hospital and was having contractions every 10 minutes), and one overdose who walked on and off the ambulance, but was vomiting a bit.
We were also pulled out of our area to Whipps Cross, and the Royal London which was happening to every ambulance, as I saw a Becontree and Homerton ambulance at Newham. At 4am Control were desperate for ambulances as they were holding seven calls in our area, and there was one ambulance to go around.
I'm working the same shift tonight, starting at 7pm Sunday evening, finishing at 7am Monday morning, going back into work at 4pm later that day. Makes me glad I don't have a long commute.
Should women in labour not call an ambulance then (if she has no other way of getting to hospital)? 300 yards doesn't seem like a long way, but perhaps if you are extremely pregnant and in agony (I don't know what a contraction feels like, and I'd guess you haven't had one either, but I've heard they're rather painful…) 300 yards isn't such a short distance.Yes, I realize labour is not an emergency in a life-or-death sense, but from reading some of your previous posts, you seem to have a problem with pregnant women requiring an ambulance. I just can't really figure out why.
-joanne
(joanne@journalesque.co.uk)
My problem…Well, to start off the families involved have had nine months in which to arrange how to get to hospital.
With labour, especially for the first child, the process is very slow – with conractions at 10 minutes apart, you've probably got well over an hour to get to hospital.
You will often get the partners (not husbands these people, no they are always 'partners') following you in their private car…
This woman in particular was walking around with no signs of pain saying “I'm having a contraction”, there is a minicab office 50 yards away, and the route to walk is shorter than the route we had to take by road.
We are mainly used because people don't want to pay for a minicab.
I'm more than happy to go to people who's labour has snuck up on them, those people who have very quick labours – I'm fine with delivering babies in the home/back of the car, but I dislike a 999 emergency ambulance being used for a taxi ride.
Imagine if you will your mother suffering a heart attack, and the reason why an ambulance is not there is because someone can't be bothered to call a cab/get driven by their partner/family.
Lots of people can do it right, but as usual it's the idiots that I get called to.
(And I get sent on them just as I'm sitting down for a cup of tea…)
Of course minicabs and black cabs all refuse to take a woman in labour because of the risks involved.
i doubt that very much. minicabs will take anything as long as it pays.re-minisce.
My god the tittle to your post sounds like a story about my mother… She's a drunk, she's my mother and do I wish she would…
I'd disagree with that, they pick up drunks and druggies (personal experience…) and I've never had a maternataxi tell me that they called a taxi and the taxi refused – normally when I ask if they thought about a taxi they stare at me in disbelief.I just don't think it crosses their minds