Restraint

From Tom Reynolds' new book More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea.

"My second job was a ‘classic’ – ‘Male collapsed in street, unknown life status – caller refusing to go near patient or answer any questions.’ So I rushed there and found two female police officers standing over a drunk male who was asleep in the street. I did all my normal checks to make sure that he was only drunk (as opposed to being drunk and in a diabetic coma, drunk and has had a stroke, or drunk and has been stabbed). Everything pointed to him being just drunk.

We woke him up and were prepared to send him on his way. He stood up – took one look at me, and smacked me in the mouth. I ‘assisted’ him onto the floor. The police officers and I then stopped him from injuring himself by sitting on him in a professional manner.

The police have been trained in restraint – they are all careful because they don’t want people dying of positional asphyxia. I haven’t been trained in restraint (well, not in the ambulance service) but I’m guessing that someone isn’t going to die because I’m kneeling over their arm
while holding their wrist.

So we carefully restrained him (for around 25 minutes), while he explained how he was either going to kick my head in or sue me. By then the police had tracked down a, now mortified, relative who came and took him away.

No damage done to me, although I would think that as he wakes up this morning he’ll have a number of bruises."

Reminds me of when Kezia was first admitted to hospital in the UK. She'd had so many needles stuck into her over the previous month it took three adults to restrain a two year old whilst the doctor tried to find a vein to get a blood sample out of her.