A paramedic has shared the “abuse” she received when she was shouted at for blocking the road while trying to save a patient’s life.
Katie Tudor was among the emergency services crew attending a call in Stoke-on-Trent when an “angry” neighbour began shouting because their driveway was blocked by the ambulance.
The crew were performing CPR on a patient who had just suffered a cardiac arrest.
Tudor took to Twitter to share her frustrations.
She wrote:
“Please don’t shout at me for blocking your parking space when I’m trying to coordinate the extrication of a pt in cardiac arrest!!
“We are desperately trying to save someone’s life and could do without angry bystanders!”
https://twitter.com/wmaskatietudor/status/953646008101228544
Tudor’s tweet was shared almost 500 times and received over 1,300 likes.
It was also retweeted by West Midlands Ambulance Service.
They later issued a statement on the matter saying that it is “incredibly frustrating” to hear that their staff are “getting abuse” while trying to save lives.
They said:
“In this particular incident, our staff were trying to save the life of a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest, the most serious type of call we attend.
“In our line of work the patient must always come first. Our staff will always endeavour to move out of the way as quickly as possible or park in a clear space in the first instance but the nature of the job means we do sometimes have to park where we block someone in.
“It is simply not acceptable that staff who are there to help people should suffer abuse from patients, their relatives or others at the scene.”
https://twitter.com/wmaskatietudor/status/949034203789873153
This comes after an unknown person in Birmingham left a note on an ambulance reading:
“You may be saving lives but don’t leave your van in a stupid place and block my drive.”
Paramedics later tweeted the note and it was met with much criticism.
The patient they had been seeing to later died in hospital.
