I often take a neighbour to the hospital for a blood test on a Monday lunchtime.
It doesn’t usually take long.
I double park and listen to the radio outside haematology and today the air ambulance took off from its hidden helicopter pad behind in service training.
In Sheffield’s Lodge Moor Hospital , everyone loved the sea king admissions , which, although rare, were popular with staff and local residents alike. Now the old Lodge Moor Hospital was perched on the Western most tip of the city at an altitude just shy of a thousand feet above sea level.
Originally a fever hospital, the “ South” wards were dominated by the Spinal Injury Unit where I cut my teeth as a junior staff nurse, and it was there, that the sea King’s used to bring their patients.
Our best nursing prank ever concerned the arrival of the sea king and a particularly dim student nurse I shall call Judith. Now Judith was a game student. She would give any nursing experience a gung ho approach and when asked to bring the helicopter in , she jumped at the chance without a delay.
First she was instructed to remove her hat and to don a nurses cape reversed, so that the bright red lining was showing on the outside. Then she was given two table tennis bats from physio and asked to stand on the field in front of helicopter pad to “guide” the helicopter in to land.
And to the astonishment of the nurses on duty, civilians from the local housing development and the two RAF PILOTS in the helicopter she did just that !
It was the funniest thing that I have ever witnessed at work…….as the giant wasp coloured aircraft roared in over the moors ,nearly blowing Judith off her feet, her glasses skewwiff , her red cape blowing valiantly behind her, as she frantically waved her table tennis bats in the air !!!
If I were a young student nurse, I probably would have done what I was told, too, and looked like an even bigger fool. Poor Judith. How'd she take it?
ReplyDeleteGamely
DeleteWonderful story, well done Judith for having a go!
ReplyDeleteI’m sure she knew it was a joke but fancied the spotlight and the game but my version makes for a better tale
DeleteDid someone get a picture of Judith guiding the helicopter landing? The image is hilarious. It sounds like something you would have seen on Saturday Night Live many years ago.
ReplyDeleteI wish , no mobile phones back then either….no mobile phones? Omg how did we cope?
DeleteOoooh, there's an evil streak in you, John! 😈 I remember when I worked in the local Wimpy bar as a teenager, we sent a young girl to the butcher for a Cumberland sausage with a throb in it. Bless her, she went! xx
ReplyDeleteNow that made me titter……
DeleteOh we played pranks on each other all of the time . You could then ….without being fearful of bullying accusations or gross misconduct..
Pranks like this was were good humoured and generally rather funny….
I’ve posted many of them here , as I have done before with this story…
Enrolled Nurse Eunice stealing and crashing the food trolley. Getting the patients drunk at the pub and crashing their wheelchairs on the way home.
Staff getting stick in laundry room windows.
Me getting the wheels of my car removed
I can go on xx
Pissing myself laughing at the vision, as right now over my house is a helicopter landing at the biggest hospital in Canada two blocks from me. I am right on the landing approach so they come so low over my house it rattles. I can just picture poor Judith up there on the roof where the helipad is, doing her thing. GG in Toronto
ReplyDeleteA country hospital seems a more benign situation I guess……I’ve been on one of those helicopters coming into Pittsburgh emergency hospital
DeleteScary
That should have read largest trauma hospital. Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights are very busy with helicopters so in summer with windows open it’s impossible to get much sleep.. I feel for the nurses and doctors there. GG
ReplyDeleteYes….emergency nursing isn’t my bag , even though I was an intensive care nurse for ten years
DeleteI don't think I'll be the only reader who doesn't find this hilarious. I see nothing funny in humilitating someone in front of others for your own pleaure. The mark of a bully.
ReplyDeleteI think you’d make a fascinating guest at a dinner party
DeleteSorry John, I usually agree with you but I think this Anon would be a pain in the proverbial at a dinner party.
DeleteThere was a large dose of irony in my statement dear Traveller xx
DeleteI’ve always thought that a lot of Americans and nearly all Germans don’t DO irony
DeleteAnon x
I only know one German ( Bernard from the village ) and he’s waspish lol…..
DeleteA dollop of irony in my response
Delete😘
DeleteWhatever you think of it, it would be called bullying and unprofessional nowadays. Perhaps that's a shame. Perhaps it isn't. I am 67 but still university lecturing part-time, and I would now never dream of making some of the jokes I made in class when I began teaching in 1981, or even ten years ago. Humour is not really allowed any more.
DeleteFGS Anonymous, it was years and years ago, and Judith probably laughed as much as anyone!
ReplyDeleteYou really need to lighten up and stop being such a nasty, boring, self righteous twerp!
No worries col xxx
DeleteI hope her drawers weren't revealed x.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked in the operating room, newbies were often sent for the Otis elevator (the company that made the fl floor to floor lifts, not a surgical elevator) or the neck tourniquet.
ReplyDeleteAnon, you don't understand medical humor so bow out of this discussion.
Hugs!
We don’t play jokes like these anymore…which , in my mind, is somewhat unfortunate
DeleteI say John, so vivid a picture in my mind from your description that I want to see it on the tv.
ReplyDeleteYou do have all the makings of many episodes of a BBC new show, would be great!!!!
Do they make sea kings anymore ? I don’t think so
DeleteBrings back memories of student nursing days, being sent for the “long stand “ was a favorite where I trained. Love the Judith story. Noreen
ReplyDeleteOr a “ Bowmans capsule “ from the kidney ward
DeleteGood one also! Noreen
DeleteNow that is a great practical joke!
ReplyDeleteIt was, I have blogged about all of the good ones too but like most oral stories, I forget what I’ve told you all
DeleteA good story is worth repeating though, don’t you think
DeleteWhen I was young we had family parties at a large old Nurses training Hospital - My cousins and I ran through corridors into a ward with dummy patients in their beds - There was a skeleton in one tall cupboard - We ran out again 🛏 x
ReplyDeleteYounand your stories..you need to share them on your own blog, you have many more than mine x
DeleteI have no help to my make one - the person upstairs is often in another place -They Used to be the office one - Anyway - My Nurse friends were laughing about a patient and her intestines - it was Gruesome ! x
DeleteI’ve heard that one
DeleteSorry - I think I may have been mentioned it before - I think they had to struggle with her pulling them through the wound x
DeleteYes do get your own blog Fliss then you won't have as much time to spend visiting and writing utter rubbish on this one.
DeleteMy friends suggested I could work at the Hospital but their details put me off 🤒💩
DeleteFlis, I hought you had agreed not to answer the anonymous comments, by replying you're just prolonging the ridiculous situation. I believe it's called 'feeding the troll'.
DeleteJohn can delete anything he wishes 🦄
DeleteWhat happened to the humour? So many funny stories from our training days. It was how we kept going.
ReplyDeleteMother told me of some arrogant junior doctors in paediatrics, in the 40’s, who ordered coffee. She made it, properly served, tray cloth and all, let them drink it, then informed them it was made with breast milk. They rushed off to throw up.
Now that would be a sackable offence now !
DeleteAs a ward manager I once had to price up fridges to keep breast milk in. ( long story )
Back when the world had a sense of humor. My first day in legal aid, the phone rang and women said, "You have go to help, they are trying to take away my lion!" That is all that confidentiality will let me tell of that story, and it was not hazing by the senior staff, that would come later.
ReplyDeleteA cracking one liner
DeleteLol
Once a psychiatric patient ran up to me whilst I was on the phone and yelled in a false Scottish accent
“What would you say say to me if I told you I was Moria Anderson ?”
It’s not funny on paper but to a group of psychiatric nurses it was pure gold and was repeated ad nausea M
Hilarious, sounds like humour was a big part of your day, and helped offset the somber reality. I would have laughed my frock off.
ReplyDeleteJo
Spinal injury nursing was the happiest place I ever worked . It was full of young men and women , who had to face devastating paralysis and who were helped by young men and women who helped and who could identify with them
DeleteHumour was a daily necessity
I always think staff in hospitals need jokes like this to keep their spirits up against a continuous stream of sad and worrying events happening every day.
ReplyDeleteYes I’ve often chatted about dark humour here
DeleteCommon within nursing, emergency services , the police etc
LOL! I hope Judith "got you back" some day!
ReplyDeleteOh I’ve been pranked many times debra, but not by Judith ….
DeleteAnd I’ve enjoyed the majority of them….you have to take them if you give them ……a lesson blogging forgets
If you give you have to take…ain’t that the truth.
DeleteOh yes some bloggers forget this rule
DeleteGaynor was a support worker on south 4 the rehab unit when I was there
DeleteIndeed some bloggers have rather thin skins even though they deal it out. If memory serves I questioned some ones quiz answers, and the blogger took their blog down for five days or so and was “very teary”
DeleteI was pranked once by some chiropractic students who rented the house next door ( also my house). They were going on a holiday and told me there was a problem with the phone and could I let in the repair man when he came.. I did and when we got to the bedroom with the phone, the repairman came running out so fast I wondered what was wrong. He said there is a skeleton on the bed. I laughed and said oh thats Space Cadet, he is harmless. GG
ReplyDeleteYou wag!
ReplyDeleteHilarious! I probably would have fallen for that.
ReplyDelete