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Bucharest llfov Ambulance Service can barely cope with the new coronavirus cases that occur daily and the usual emergencies. Many people complain that crews are late. Employees here have to deal with the lawsuits, but the virus has also hit them. And there is less. Disinfection procedures are another reason to delay interventions. We see in “Patient in Romania” what a day in the Bucharest ambulance is like, but also the story of the first infected employee of all ambulance services in the country.
“Please tell me, have you been in contact with people diagnosed with coronavirus?” Relatives, friends from abroad more recently? Did you or the lady travel? Pain and swelling in the hand, where exactly is it, in what area of the hand? “
At the ambulance dispatcher, the phone keeps ringing. In addition to the emergencies in which doctors usually intervene, there are now cases of coronavirus. There is almost no time for an ambulance not to leave the base.
An average of 1,200 people call the ambulance for help every day.
“A medical team will arrive as soon as possible, right?” Conscious, cooperative, the lady is communicating with you, right?
The emergency is transmitted to the crew: “253, we confirm Golescu Dinicu”.
How to proceed when the ambulance transports a COVID patient
The pandemic also changed the rules of the emergency system. This intervention team must take care of a patient infected with the new coronavirus. But before leaving, doctors and nurses must wear protective gear, which increases the wait time.
The patient was transferred to the Matei Balş Institute. Upon returning to headquarters, the crew cannot leave immediately for another case, because it is contaminated. The mandatory procedure is the dismantling and disinfection of the ambulance.
“In a suspected or confirmed patient, this is the procedure: now we enter the decontamination room, followed by nebulization based on dry vapors, so to speak, then it is with chemical solutions, chlorine or alcohol. Then follow the procedure with hand sanitizer and then remove the overalls. Then we clean the surfaces of the toilets, the equipment, we also physically decontaminate the toilets ”, explains a member of the crew.
“The number of cases is constantly increasing, according to reports, and we feel the volume of work,” says Andrei Stefan, assistant to the Ambulance Service Bucharest-Ilfov (SABIF).
How long does an intervention last? Time has doubled
“These requests have arisen with suspicion of SARS-CoV-2, which requires longer team times. The time to resolve a request that requires a full team is much longer, it is double, sometimes even triple compared to a regular request. If before a common emergency that a crew attended was between 50 minutes and one hour and 10 minutes before it was admitted to a hospital, now it can reach two hours and sometimes more, if the times of waiting are greater when patients are received ”, explains Alis Grasu, director of SABIF.
“Hello! We will call you from the ambulance. How are you feeling?”
In the Bucharest ambulance there is also a new department that deals only with coronavirus cases. There are also DSP doctors and emergency department personnel here who call patients who have tested positive. If his condition worsens, he is immediately transferred to the hospital.
“Hello, sorry for the inconvenience, we called you from Ambulance, in collaboration with DSP. How are you feeling today? One second, don’t shut up, I have a DSP doctor by my side, I will ask him for information now and I will tell him right away. Then You have 16 days to stay at home. Did you get test result 2? Well. As long as you pass the positive test, you are obliged to stay home, isolated. “, explains the operator of the interlocutor with COVID.
The staff that has to do all these things is insufficient, even if they have been hired before. The situation is also compounded by the fact that the virus also did not spare rescuers.
The story of Constantin, the first Ambulance employee to be infected: “Even you, who also wore two masks?”
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 50 employees of the Bucharest Ilfov Ambulance Service have been infected. Also here was the first case of COVID-19 in the national ambulance system. Nurse Constantin Paleu has tears in her eyes when she tells what happened.
“I was on the day shift, I was at the Obregia Hospital, I had just taken a patient for hospitalization. When we got to the ambulance, I said to my colleague: Bogdan, I’m not feeling well. It is very exciting to remember. (Crying) And I say: I have a condition that I never had, ”says Constantin Paleu, general nurse.
The test result confirmed his suspicions. He was infected with the new coronavirus. He remained in the hospital for 26 days.
26 days of nightmare
“Almost all this time in boarding school, the manager called me, called me in the morning, at noon and at night: Come home! Doesn’t it come back negative? My legs are shaking, I have real emotions, because I remember … It was something horrible ”, confesses Constantin, his voice choked.
“I was alone in the room, there were doctors in overalls, with a visor, I didn’t know if he was a nurse, if he was an assistant, if he was a doctor, I was alone in the room, I could hear: China dies, France dies, Italy dies. I was thinking: will I go to bed if I wake up the next day with dyspnea? Yes, it was unforgettable, ”says the ambulance attendant.
Although he is a medical professional, the disease scared him like any other patient. His colleagues constantly encouraged him, who made gestures that he will never forget: every time they arrived with other patients at the hospital where he was admitted, they would honk in the hospital courtyard to know that they were there, with him.
“They called me and gave me a little mermaid: We are on the flag by your side. Yes, they were always by my side, everyone, even those from the country. And everyone wondered: how, even you, who also wore two masks? – he says to Constantin Paleu.
The moment the doctors told him it was negative, he was happy as a child. And he always wanted to remember the moment of happiness that weighed like an eternity. So he put a painting in the room that said NEGATIVE.
Until then, however, the month of torment that he lived through was the darkest period of his life. The pressure that the illness brought to Constantine was doubled by fear of his loved ones. He discovered that he had infected his family and one of his colleagues.
“Daddy, do you have something, do you taste, do you smell, do you have a fever?”
“I didn’t have a cough, I didn’t have a fever, it was much easier. I was afraid, because as you know and as some say, this disease is perverse, you don’t know what happens to you the next day. Today you are fine, tomorrow you wake up that you no longer You can breathe, you have a fever, you have complications, it reaches your lungs. I was scared, honestly I was scared and everyone at home was scared, and the children are small, 8 and 10. Diary: Dad, do you have something? Do you taste, smell, something hurts, let’s see, do you have a fever?”- says Bogdan Sandu, SABIF ambulance driver.
The Bucharest-Ilfov ambulance still has coronavirus cases among employees: 13. And there is a lack of staff.
“We are all tired, we have constantly met our needs when our staff quarantines us or isolates us.” says Alis Grasu, director of SABIF.
I asked him what people who say they have been waiting for an ambulance for a long time should know.
“You have to understand that there can be long waiting times. Unfortunately, we are few. The shortage of staff, even with the work we have done through the selection of archives, even with the ones we will do, is still quite high in the Bucharest region- Ilfov, ”says Alis Grasu.
