The Order of St John (known by everyone as St John’s Ambulance) run New Zealand’s Ambulance Service throughout the country (except Wellington).
The Coromandel Peninsula and Hauraki come under the St John Northern Region and each day there can be up to 800 emergency calls to the service in our region alone.
A few weeks ago, our family urgently needed their services. That day we had collected one of our young granddaughters from the airport to spend a week of the school holidays with us. She arrived with her usual high levels of energy and excitement and carrying a cold.
That evening around bedtime she started complaining of some breathlessness and a cough. Despite some Pamol and a hot lemon and honey drink, her condition gradually worsened. We ran through the options of calling the Mercury Bay Medical Centre, 111 or driving her to Thames Hospital A and E.
There is also a superb free telephone service available throughout the country Healthline 0800 611 116. The service is manned by a variety of health professionals and in our case a young man calmly and carefully listened to the situation and gave some excellent advice. He immediately called an ambulance and then continued to update us on its’ ETA, reassured us and directed that we call 111 if things deteriorated.
By the time the ambulance arrived some 40 minutes later our little one was starting to really struggle for breath. The two paramedics swung into action and soon determined that her oxygen saturation levels were way too low and immediately placed her on supplementary oxygen and then a nebuliser.
A call was then made to their clinical centre, and a decision was quickly made to transport her to Thames Hospital accompanied by her Nana. For both it was their first and hopefully their last ambulance ride.
Despite Thames Hospital’s A and E (now Emergency Department) being full they were quickly assessed, diagnosed with a viral wheeze. treated and discharged the following morning.
You will all have read the shock horror stories of our ‘broken health services’ but be assured that in this case each and every health professional involved, from the Healthline call takers, to the paramedics and the hospital staff, were all highly professional, compassionate and an absolute credit to their profession.
The lesson for us was that we shouldn’t be afraid to call for help but unless it’s an obvious emergency and you don’t want to trouble 111, try the Healthline first.
A huge thank you to our health professionals who are too often underpaid and under-appreciated.
