Seen;
22 year old female, taken 30 paracetamol and 18 diazepam. Tachycardia and low BP. ECG ok.
51 year old male, taken 40-50 paracetamol. Put straight into majors without nurse assessment.
16 year old male, ? #spine #tib/fib (RTC)
95 year old female chest pains
23 year old female chest pains
90 year old female, chest pains, put straight into resus
45 year old male chest pains (although could walk and showed no signs of pain)
17 year old female abdo pains
34 year old female abdo pains, put into resus, very bad UTI
40 year old male, stab wound, under arrest
These are just the ones I can remember. The actual list would be 2-3 times the length of this. Most of the OD patients must have walked in, or be forced to walk in by someone else, because when I looked at the screen there were more in majors than I had seen. Our young female was the first OD I saw, her obs were slightly abnomal, but she seemed fairly competant. She told me it had been two years since she was viciously raped, and that is why she took the pills. Her pulse was racing and she had a fairly low BP, and just as I'd finished taking her obs she asked if she could go home. She hadn't even seen a nurse yet, let alone a doctor. I did my best to persuade her to stay. We put her in a side room, and I made the security staff aware. She was deemed incompetant by her nurse assessment, and therefore should be restrained. Every time I walked past the room she asked if she could go home, so I had a security guard stand outside the room and make sure she didn't go anywhere. If she left we would have had to call the police. It was quite a strange experience, she talked so normally, and she looked so together.
Our 16 year old was brought in on a spinal board, he'd been on it for over an hour and it was starting to hurt. He was alert, but in pain. He had a lot of his family and friends with him. When I made a start on his ECG, I found a tattoo on his chest of a wolf, his mum said that his dad had only just found out about it. He couldn't have picked a better time to tell them really, it was the least of their worries. He had some new clothes on, nice jeans and a new jacket, both were cut up by the ambulance crew. I'd like to say I didn't chuckle...
I was on our A&E ward for a short period, where a man was being held under arrest. He had a small stab wound to his neck, and was awaiting stitches. He had been attacked by a man with a knife, although he didn't have much to show for it. The man who allegedly cut him was in intensive care. According to our patient, this other bloke (who was known to him) had cut him first, so he grabbed the knife out of his hand and stabbed him back several times in what can only be described as a frenzied attack. This person had multiple stab wounds, haemothorax and was partially disemboweled. Our patient kept asking why he was under arrest, 'I shouldn't be here, it was in self defence'. Obviously this was far beyond self defence and he was under arrest for attempted murder. He kept muttering it over and over again. I didn't know if he was trying to convince me, the police officers or himself.
A very interesting shift I must say!
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