We've finished 2 weeks!

Friday
 (*apologies for less photos - my phone died and it's a lot harder to get my camera out with sneaky ninja style!)

I began the day checking over equipment with Zsolt the ambulance driver who is very skillful at what he does but is also very good at making his passengers go wildly tachycardic! Jason likes to call him Michael Schumacher. I did express my appreciation at the end of the day that I was still alive!
Three jobs were severe enough to warrant the Emergency Doctor's help with lights and sirens today. The first took us inside a small double storey "Politia" building in the middle of a village so small you'd definitely miss it if you weren't keeping your eyes peeled. Upstairs we found a victim of stabbing with unremarkable symptoms. I recall someone whispering to me 'this is not an emergency - probably every day for him!'. Again, varied perceptions of what constitutes an emergency the world over!

I'm in the Dr's car (SUV), we follow this Intensive Care Ambulance out to a job

SMURD ambulance service covers a large area and I enjoyed the country scenery as we head out to rural communities where, to quote the emergency Dr, "it is the medieval age", and horses and carts are more common than cars! Our second and third jobs were both motor vehicle accidents - one a collision after which the driver had a short loss of consciousness with no major injury that we could find and the other one a driver who unfortunately didn't seem to anticipate a T-junction and
zoomed straight across the dark country road into a 3m deep ditch. The only sign I could see was a supraorbital fracture but I only got to observe for 2min. Scene time is very very short here (I'm talking less than 5min unless a tricky extrication is involved) and I've found questions really are kept to a minimum: the doctor couldn't tell me what approximate speed the car was travelling at or how the patient's body moved as he became injured, but he could tell me that one damaged car out of the two involved signalled the injury was not extremely severe and that the patient's main problem was tied to to the blood coming from his mouth.

Second MVA we went to

In between paramedic jobs Jason and I studied up on heart rhythms to interpret strange ECG patterns and found out the differentiating symptoms between a haemmorhagic stroke and a cerebral aneurysm to diagnose a certain patient whose Romanian case sheet we couldn't translate. We also studied up on risk factors for stroke so that we could combat a Dr's denial that smoking was a likely contributor to a patient's poor vascular state and chronic hypertension. Important note here is that nearly every Romanian smokes and has a heavy bread, meat and fried diet. If you're in the medical field, do the maths ;) I also listened to a patient's clicking chest - that is, a mechanical aortic valve, and saw insulin given intravenously which I haven't really encountered before. Another thing they give intravenously is Metoclopramide - without a cannula or any sort of port at all!

We are also learning more about communication here. I've learned to hold a mini converstaion with a patient from greeting to taking an echocardiogram and now ask for permission saying "May I" rather than the previous uninterpretable combination of words we came up with. Patient communication is so integral to treatment that it's very satisfying to see that our efforts in consolation can transcend cultural barriers!

Thanks for reading - it's late so
Noapte Buna!