Dublin city centre is a hive of activity at the best of times, weekends, in particular. Even more particularly, it’s a hive of activity during weekend evenings and night times. On the Today programme, presented this morning by Cormac Ó hEadhra, we heard some criticism of much of what goes on around the streets of the capital from tourism expert, Prof. Michael Hall.
But exploring another aspect to that activity, and continuing his excellent series of reports, Brian O’Connell teamed up with the Dublin Fire Brigade Ambulance Service, to look at the sometimes frenetic and often challenging work of their extraordinary team of paramedics.
Brian spent last Friday night and into Saturday morning with one unit of the DFB Ambulance Service, where he discovered a huge range of calls faced by the paramedics operating these units. He started around 7PM and went through until about 3AM with advanced paramedic Tom McLaughlin, who has been with the service for about 30 years. What did they encounter?
“Quite a variety of cases from a 70-year-old to a 24-week-old, and many in between. An interesting night, and I suppose quite a typical night for Dublin Fire Brigade Ambulance.”
That 24-week-old baby was male, in “some respiratory distress” and “quite a serious case”, according to Tom McLaughlin. In Brian’s report, as you can hear from the clip attached here, Tom’s concern for the child's welfare is very evident.
“He is struggling quite a lot and he’s using a lot of accessory muscles to breathe, so we are quite concerned about him. We are not wasting any time, we have the hospital on standby.”
The scene at the parents' home was also difficult. This was the mother’s first child, and he had had respiratory problems since birth. Given the critical nature of the situation, the paramedics had found it difficult to get accurate information at the scene, so there was a real necessity to get the baby to hospital as soon as possible.
Apart from that case, the evening started with two possible overdoses in the first hour alone. In Brian’s first clips, which you can hear by listening back to the report in full, the ambulance unit responds to a call from a member of the public who telephoned the control centre saying a female was on the ground and unresponsive.
Later in the evening, they rushed to a man who had been stabbed and was losing significant quantities of blood. Up to 5 paramedics worked on this man, one of them holding bandages tightly around the wounds in an effort to stop the bleeding. It was, according to Brian O’Connell, a very distressing scene and the paramedics were under significant pressure as they had to act fast to stabilise the victim and get him to hospital.
Brian spent eight hours with Tom McLaughlin, which included periods of inactivity as well. During these periods, the unit stayed mobile in and around the M50 or city centre, waiting to be called, at which stage they would leap to action.
At one stage, while they were on the way to attend a possible cardiac arrest of a 40-year-old male in one side of the city, they were diverted to what turned out to be the most serious case of the night: the young, 24-month-old baby who had stopped breathing. The ambulance crew travelled at speeds of up to 160 km/h towards the case, transferring the young child to hospital.
To listen to the full report from Brian O’Connell, click here.