Coastguards resign after reprimand - here we go again

Two people with 32 years and 18 years of service, experience and training.

I wonder how much experience the person organising the reprimand had ?

I'm no Paramedic or Coastguard ( do have 3 First Aid tickets ) but have opted to take my very ill mother and seriously injured father to hospital in my car several times.

When my mother was in severe distress with terminal throat cancer recently the brilliant ambulance crew waited with her administering aid for over four hours as they couldn't get an emergency doctor out with a sedative - then we all agreed she had to go to hospital.

They promised they would look after her in the ambulance until a bed was free in A & E - and were not only good for their word, they came to see her in Redhill hospital and Dad and I at home the next day.

I despair for ' common ' sense - if these Coastguards aren't reinstated and given free beers for life, the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.
 
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The only explanation I can offer for the extreme treatment of the senior Coastguards in all these cases is that the MCA actually wants to reduce the number of coastguards and these cases are a ludicrously hamfisted way of achieving that aim. Any competent management would simply have a private counselling, perhaps going as far as a formal warning if they wanted to retain their people.

The Coastguard Senior Management in Southampton will inevitably be provided with transcripts of these threads and will either be cringing with embarrassment or wringing their hands in glee that their retrenchment plan is working. We'll see how it pans out in due course. :ambivalence:

Richard
 
Seeing as I had a lot of training re back injuries even on a few First Aid courses - and had to use it when someone was badly hurt, ( happy outcome ) I'd think these Coastguards with all their experience had excellent training; do you really think they should have just stood around and shrugged looking at their watches for hours ?
 
JumbleDuck said:
And how many years' experience of medical assessment of back injuries?
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CG's with as many years experience as these guys will have attended numerous personal injury incidents, certainly enough to form an opinion of the seriousness or otherwise of an injury. Full marks to them for taking the initiative, but this obviously is not part of a Modern CG 's brief. Doesnt bode well for future of CG SAR services .
 
JumbleDuck said:
And how many years' experience of medical assessment of back injuries?
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The story I read said there was a paramedic responder with them who was fine with their transporting the patient. The back story here is why was no ambulance available within a reasonable time? Years ago that would have been a scandal in itself, now just normal.
 
Concerto said:
Two north Devon coastguards who were reprimanded for taking a teenager to hospital in a van rather than waiting 2 hours for an ambulance, have resigned. Full story here.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ards-resign-telling-taking-teenager-hospital/
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The article you linked to says they took the casualty to casualty in their van and were reprimanded for not informing their Control Ops Room. It doesn't say they were reprimanded for transferring the unconscious man in their van.
The next morning Mr Court said he was chastised by his area manager for failing to call the control ops room in Falmouth in Cornwall before transporting the man to hospital.
“He said I should have waited for a call from the duty officer to sign-off on the transfer.
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Do you have a link to support your interpretation of the reason for the reprimand?
 
A1Sailor said:
The article you linked to says they took the casualty to casualty in their van and were reprimanded for not informing their Control Ops Room. It doesn't say they were reprimanded for transferring the unconscious man in their van.

Do you have a link to support your interpretation of the reason for the reprimand?
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Suggest to read the full story in the link.
 
Biggles Wader said:
The story I read said there was a paramedic responder with them who was fine with their transporting the patient. The back story here is why was no ambulance available within a reasonable time? Years ago that would have been a scandal in itself, now just normal.
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As I read the story, the ambulance was on it's way, but was diverted to another more urgent case. Imagine the headlines.. mum dies after stroke because ambulance was sent to collect drunken idiot.
 
Seajet said:
................I despair for ' common ' sense - if these Coastguards aren't reinstated and given free beers for life, the lunatics really have taken over the asylum.
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I was a CG for nearly 15 years, shedloads of local knowledge, a ton of training, experience and team management, and I left a few years earlier than I planned to because of exactly this sort of indication of the way the service was going.
 
Tomahawk said:
As I read the story, the ambulance was on it's way, but was diverted to another more urgent case. Imagine the headlines.. mum dies after stroke because ambulance was sent to collect drunken idiot.
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I believe more urgent patients, in at least two separate incidents, were deemed a higher priority than the drunk sand dune man.
Two ambulances assigned to the incident were diverted to more serious accidents. After an hour and a half wait, the paramedic on the scene advised Mr Court it could be another two hours until an ambulance became available.
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At present our society from the top down seems to be based on conflict and blame. Admin duties dominate our lives and creativity is abandoned in favour of identifying and punishing mistakes.

God knows how we got into this situation but we must start to change. Often people with the strongest opinions ( note to me) are often those with the least knowledge as once you consider any issue seriously you will often find that it defies a categorical opinion either way.
 
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I also wonder what happened to 'there are two sides to every story'.

Plus evading the directions of a superior to ones advantage is actually known to any uniform wearers since about ten seconds after uniforms were invented.....

' I rang and rang on my mobile but no one at your end was answering. You should get that sorted out.'

We were told that a cute puppy might have been abandoned in the car so we were just checking and moved it just in case'.

Win win. ;)
 
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