You wouldn't think that a crazy, insane, one in a million day at work would be the perfect way to end a huge year. No rural nurse would think that 5 air ambulance retrievals in one day is a good thing (we usually have about 1 per month). And I don't think there are too many people who want to work 13 hours on a Sunday. Much less New Year's Eve.And yet this is what my last shift of the year was like and it was one of the best I've had. Sometimes the worst days are the best days.

Let me start at the beginning. Regular readers would know of the training course I recently went to. Since then I have felt significantly more confident and competent in my nusing practice and on New Year's Eve I put those new found skills to work. The day started at 5.30 am when my housemate rang me to find out where we keep a very useful and important machine that we rarely use. This was because she was looking after a patient who had started to bleed internally. She also mentioned that they had a patient with a foot injury from a motorcycle accident would need extensive surgery. An hour later I started work and jumped into the thick of things even though I knew none of the patients and had no idea what was wrong with most of them. The two sick ones took up most of the morning as we tried to stablise the patients and organise them to be retrieved by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Finally after hours of low blood pressure and fluid replacement, we got the call that RFDS were on their way. At 2 pm, I went with the patients in the ambulance to meet the plane at the airport. We had no sooner loaded the patients into the plane then the local paramedics got called to a car accident and (because it would take to long to drop me at the hospital first) I got abandoned at the airport all by myself after making a quick call to my sleeping housemate asking her to pick me up.

We arrived back at the hospital at 3 pm just as the first ambulance was turning up. I couldn't find any of the other nurses on shift so I met the ambulance as it pulled in. I knew it was going to be a long night when I saw one of the volunteer fire fighters driving the ambulance meaning the paramedic was in the back with a very injured person and more were on their way. The first patient was the young driver of the car. He had a badly smashed up face and was not in very good shape. I spent the next 3 hours or so with another nurse and 2 doctors trying to stablise him for retrieval. Meanwhile, the other two passengers had arrived unbeknownst to me and I found out later that my exceptional housemate had the uneviable role of doing initial assessments & management of these two because my patient was the more serious of the three and commanded the initial attention of the doctors.

To summarise, the injuries and treatment - my guy lost 1.2 litres of blood from facial injuries alone and required a breathing tube (which I got to assist with!). He had multiple facial fractures and to my knowledge is still in intensive care. The other two passengers had facial fractures and were also air lifted but I think had been discharged from hospital awaiting further treatment. Sarah and I performed excellently in this stressful situation and it was a poetic illustration of how far we have come in only 1 year. It was such a proud day in my career as a nurse. Happy New Year!