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The hardest thing was cutting his Christmas jumper to attach the defibrillator pads Cutting his Christmas jumper to stop him dying was the hard part
(35 minutes later)
Christmas Day as the medical doctor on call in a busy district general hospital isn’t bad. Nobody wants to come into hospital so the workload is light; all the nurses are in good spirits, which makes the job 100 times easier; and every ward is having a mini Christmas party in its staff room, which means lots of free food and sweets for a friendly doctor.Christmas Day as the medical doctor on call in a busy district general hospital isn’t bad. Nobody wants to come into hospital so the workload is light; all the nurses are in good spirits, which makes the job 100 times easier; and every ward is having a mini Christmas party in its staff room, which means lots of free food and sweets for a friendly doctor.
As a single 26-year-old man with no children, I’d conveniently been allocated the Christmas Day shift for the fourth year in a row. My belly was full and I’d had more cups of tea in a 12-hour shift than in the past 12 days. It was going just as I expected. Then … the arrest bleep.As a single 26-year-old man with no children, I’d conveniently been allocated the Christmas Day shift for the fourth year in a row. My belly was full and I’d had more cups of tea in a 12-hour shift than in the past 12 days. It was going just as I expected. Then … the arrest bleep.
For non-medics out there, it is kind of like the movies. The 10-year-old piece of plastic attached to your baggy scrub bottoms begins making loud noises, then spits out the sound of a panicked nurse’s voice, shouting muffled instructions. This time, however, “cardiac arrest, resus room” was quite clear.For non-medics out there, it is kind of like the movies. The 10-year-old piece of plastic attached to your baggy scrub bottoms begins making loud noises, then spits out the sound of a panicked nurse’s voice, shouting muffled instructions. This time, however, “cardiac arrest, resus room” was quite clear.
Getting to an arrest isn’t full speed like in ER or Grey’s Anatomy; for me, it’s more of a casual jog. There will, after all, be nurses and A&E doctors already there; they just need an extra set of hands and occasionally someone more senior to turn up. So I jogged. I arrived, slightly out of breath, and was met by a scene that ruined my Christmas: the howls and cries of two stricken women – one in her fifties, one in her twenties – and two nurses and an A&E doctor doing CPR on a man in his fifties.Getting to an arrest isn’t full speed like in ER or Grey’s Anatomy; for me, it’s more of a casual jog. There will, after all, be nurses and A&E doctors already there; they just need an extra set of hands and occasionally someone more senior to turn up. So I jogged. I arrived, slightly out of breath, and was met by a scene that ruined my Christmas: the howls and cries of two stricken women – one in her fifties, one in her twenties – and two nurses and an A&E doctor doing CPR on a man in his fifties.
The single most heartbreaking image that will never leave me was the patient’s jumper. It was red, with a Christmas tree and lights. The kind you wear at Christmas dinner or on your festive night out. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is cut through the jumper to attach defibrillator pads. And, one of the most difficult stories to hear was the daughter’s, who later told me her father had complained of chest pain during dinner before collapsing, and how they’d dragged him to the car.The single most heartbreaking image that will never leave me was the patient’s jumper. It was red, with a Christmas tree and lights. The kind you wear at Christmas dinner or on your festive night out. One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is cut through the jumper to attach defibrillator pads. And, one of the most difficult stories to hear was the daughter’s, who later told me her father had complained of chest pain during dinner before collapsing, and how they’d dragged him to the car.
We worked hard, we tried everything, and kept going for longer than usual. Given the circumstances, we were keen to continue in case there was any chance he would survive. I was drenched in sweat by the time we gave up. My shift had ended an hour before. Doctors and nurses are used to death; we are almost immune and can get back to work right away. But I’ll always remember the silence after we stopped. I’ll remember the expressions on everyone’s faces. We barely managed to hold our emotions in check. I still remember how it felt. It was a fraction of what the family felt, of what they’d lost, but to experience this on Christmas Day seemed so unfair.We worked hard, we tried everything, and kept going for longer than usual. Given the circumstances, we were keen to continue in case there was any chance he would survive. I was drenched in sweat by the time we gave up. My shift had ended an hour before. Doctors and nurses are used to death; we are almost immune and can get back to work right away. But I’ll always remember the silence after we stopped. I’ll remember the expressions on everyone’s faces. We barely managed to hold our emotions in check. I still remember how it felt. It was a fraction of what the family felt, of what they’d lost, but to experience this on Christmas Day seemed so unfair.
I’ll work many more Christmas days, but I hope to never have one like that.I’ll work many more Christmas days, but I hope to never have one like that.
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