My Working Day/Alan Gaughan, emergency medical technician (EMT) at Belmullet ambulance base, Co Mayo, monitors and cares for patients on the way to hospital.
My main role as an EMT is to respond to 999 calls and emergencies and to provide care and treatment to patients.
We work seven 12-hour shifts each fortnight. The shifts are 9am-9pm; cover during the night is provided by the on-call staff. We cover all of north and west Mayo which is largely a rural, remote area.
An EMT must have a licence to drive a light truck and a minibus in order to be covered to drive an ambulance. The crews are interchangeable so you could be driving the ambulance on one call and be in the back with the patient for the next call.
When we go in to start our shift in the morning, we always thoroughly check the vehicle including tyres, oil, water and fuel even though anyone coming off shift will have already checked. There is a lot of electronic equipment in the back of the ambulance that runs on batteries so we have to check all the batteries, oxygen and supplies to ensure that there is no delay at the scene of an accident. We then sign out the drug box and wait for calls to come in.
The bulk of our work tends to be medical, ie heart attacks, respiratory problems and strokes, but at this time of year we are also called to a lot of farm accidents and falls.
Each ambulance is equipped with an ECG to monitor the rhythm of the patient's heart and to identify if they have had a heart attack. We can transmit the results of the ECG to the casualty department in Castlebar by fax through our mobile phones.
We can also take blood pressure and measure the levels of oxygen in the patient's blood to tell how well they are doing. We have a choice of defibrillators for use in the event of a crisis.
There is a protocol we follow at the scene of every trauma such as a road traffic accident. As we approach the scene, we judge the likely condition of the patient by the damage caused to the car. If the door pillars between the two doors have been pushed in and the airbag activated for instance, we know somebody is likely to have been badly hurt.
If you are called to a bad accident and see something very upsetting, there is a peer support network called Critical Incident Stress Debriefing in place among the ambulance services nationally to provide support.
The most difficult part of the job for me is seeing a child or young person badly hurt because it makes you think about your own family. The best part, on the other hand, is meeting somebody you brought to hospital going about their daily business again a few weeks later.
From a training and equipment point of view, we lack nothing in the ambulance services, but we do need more staff.