Saturday, 10 November 2007

All over Watford this morning, voluntary groups opened their post and thought: "Complementary? Is he a fool?" Ho hum.

After some work on HIC projects, Jackie and I took a break to go to our local community museum (the delightful Mill Green Museum in Hatfield) and then into Hatfield to do some shopping and visit the library.

Trying to be helpful

After our shopping, we found a very distressed man sitting on a low wall. He wouldn’t speak or raise his head, but I could tell he was about our age and he was coughing up blood which I know is not a good sign. After Jackie and I failed to rouse him, I called the emergency services and within about four minutes a Paramedic had arrived. She parked right next to the chap and started checking his vital signs and trying to establish communication with him.

Almost immediately an assertive (possibly aggressive) lady driver asked the Paramedic to move her emergency car as she was blocking the traffic: “I’m not being insensitive but I’ve got to get somewhere”. The Paramedic said she was on an emergency call and would move her car in a few minutes. She then decided the chap needed hospital treatment and called for an Ambulance. But she still couldn’t establish communication and I suggested that perhaps her patient didn’t speak English. She was armed with a phrasebook and soon worked out that her patient was Russian.

Jackie then returned from the library to say that the library staff had told her that they knew him and that he “regularly did drink and drugs”. The Ambulance had now arrived and one of their team decided to pop into the library to ask if they knew the chap's name as this could help speed up treatment etc.

Things then happened very fast. The next thing I remember, the lady in the library was arguing with the Ambulance man saying she couldn’t tell him anything about the man because of "the Data Protection Act" - this same lady had just happily told Jackie that the man “regularly did drink and drugs”.

Meanwhile, the assertive (possibly aggressive) lady driver was becoming more strident and was asking the Paramedic why she couldn’t move her car and did she want her to move the car for her?

And the patient was now face down on the pavement refusing to be moved. Another member of the Ambulance crew (having already established that the patient understood no English) stood over the man saying: “This might be ok in your own country, but not here, alright? Do you want me to call the Police to arrest you?”

Jackie and I decided it was time to leave. I am usually at my most dangerous when trying to be helpful.

Once home, I worked like fury on the IT and Training strategies. Of course we are still consulting with other HIC members and with front-line organisations, but I have enough background now at least to get the bare bones of the strategies sketched out.