Graham
09-07-2009, 18:36
hayibo.com
Nurses and patients relieved that compulsively heroic army medics gone
JOHANNESBURG. As striking doctors return to hospitals around the country, nurses and patients have expressed relief that they will no longer have to deal with the army medics who stood in during the crisis. "They are incredibly brave," said one nurse, "but it's also a bit awkward because they are always screaming for 'more plasma!' and throwing themselves onto patients."
Nurses at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital said they had been impressed by the almost obsessive focus of the army medics, but added that medics were sometimes difficult to call as they only responded to screams and tended to ignore intercom announcements.
"They ignored us because we were not wounded," said Sister Sledge Mbete. "We would have to poke the patient with a needle to make them scream, 'Medic! Medic!'"
The hospital also confirmed that it had a problem with medics stealing and administering thousands of ampoules of morphine.
"That's all they ever gave us," recalled patient Cassius Mangope. "I came in with a ringworm on my foot. This young doctor ran up, sort of crouched over. He looked very tired and twitchy, and he held my face in his hands and said, 'Don't you f***ing die on me, you glorious son of a bitch', and I told him I was only there for my ringworm, and he burst into tears and then shot me up with about eight little bottles of morphine.
"It felt fantastic."
According to Sister Stigmata Phiri at Groote Schuur in Cape Town, the medics had also refused to let surgeons operate, instead throwing themselves on top of patients and swearing to kill anyone who laid a finger on them.
"We found out that they are trained to throw themselves onto hand-grenades, but in the state service we don't have a lot of hand-grenades in the hospitals, so they would just throw themselves onto anything – buckets, beepers, the floor, whatever," she said.
However, she said, the worst was when medics got phone calls while on duty.
"You'd be in the middle of an operation and if you told a medic that he had an incoming call at reception, he'd scream 'Shit! Incoming!' and throw himself on top of the patient, and then administer between 10 and 30 ampoules of morphine, sometimes to himself."
She said that nurses were also sometimes upset by the medics' emotional outbursts after losing patients.
"If a patient failed to recover they'd just go to pieces," said Phiri. "They'd do mouth-to-mouth and pound on their chest for about an hour after the time of death, screaming, 'Not on my watch, you heroic bastard!', and then they'd inject the normal 40 or 50 amps of morphine, and then eventually they'd collapse on the deceased and just cry and cry."
She said one medic had performed mouth-to-mouth on a deceased patient for three hours.
"We didn't have the heart to tell him that the head was no longer attached to the deceased's torso," she said.
Nurses and patients relieved that compulsively heroic army medics gone
JOHANNESBURG. As striking doctors return to hospitals around the country, nurses and patients have expressed relief that they will no longer have to deal with the army medics who stood in during the crisis. "They are incredibly brave," said one nurse, "but it's also a bit awkward because they are always screaming for 'more plasma!' and throwing themselves onto patients."
Nurses at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital said they had been impressed by the almost obsessive focus of the army medics, but added that medics were sometimes difficult to call as they only responded to screams and tended to ignore intercom announcements.
"They ignored us because we were not wounded," said Sister Sledge Mbete. "We would have to poke the patient with a needle to make them scream, 'Medic! Medic!'"
The hospital also confirmed that it had a problem with medics stealing and administering thousands of ampoules of morphine.
"That's all they ever gave us," recalled patient Cassius Mangope. "I came in with a ringworm on my foot. This young doctor ran up, sort of crouched over. He looked very tired and twitchy, and he held my face in his hands and said, 'Don't you f***ing die on me, you glorious son of a bitch', and I told him I was only there for my ringworm, and he burst into tears and then shot me up with about eight little bottles of morphine.
"It felt fantastic."
According to Sister Stigmata Phiri at Groote Schuur in Cape Town, the medics had also refused to let surgeons operate, instead throwing themselves on top of patients and swearing to kill anyone who laid a finger on them.
"We found out that they are trained to throw themselves onto hand-grenades, but in the state service we don't have a lot of hand-grenades in the hospitals, so they would just throw themselves onto anything – buckets, beepers, the floor, whatever," she said.
However, she said, the worst was when medics got phone calls while on duty.
"You'd be in the middle of an operation and if you told a medic that he had an incoming call at reception, he'd scream 'Shit! Incoming!' and throw himself on top of the patient, and then administer between 10 and 30 ampoules of morphine, sometimes to himself."
She said that nurses were also sometimes upset by the medics' emotional outbursts after losing patients.
"If a patient failed to recover they'd just go to pieces," said Phiri. "They'd do mouth-to-mouth and pound on their chest for about an hour after the time of death, screaming, 'Not on my watch, you heroic bastard!', and then they'd inject the normal 40 or 50 amps of morphine, and then eventually they'd collapse on the deceased and just cry and cry."
She said one medic had performed mouth-to-mouth on a deceased patient for three hours.
"We didn't have the heart to tell him that the head was no longer attached to the deceased's torso," she said.