20/03/2026
You get to the base, you hop into the ambulace wearing your fancy ahh fulo clothes that allow you to go places and you drive off to the first patient. It's either a hospital you go to, patient's home or wherever the person lives. You arrive, check the papers, see if the patient is can walk, is supposed to be on a wheelchair or totally on the stretcher. You get in with the equipment provided by the company (I'll get to that later). You take the patient and if the patient lives somewhere where there is no elevator, you have to carry them down the stairs how many floor it takes, on whatever equipment you have, no matter how much they weight. You put them in the ambulance and get it. You check where you're supposed to go and once you get there you do the whole process just backwards. Sometimes you need to hook the patient to the oxygen bottle and monitour the oxygen levels on the bottle and check up with the patient if that's enough or if they need more. Easy. Sure, want to hear how my average day of this week was like? Nope. Too bad, you're already reading this so you'll hear.
I get to the base, hop into the ambulace, drive to the patient. Something's wrong with the ambulace. You wait for the next team to give them the patient. You spend an hour or so waiting and trying to figure out what's wrong. Tyres, steering, light, electric instalation, ignition. Okay, driver is at his limits. You manage to bring the ambulance to the mechanic that is also at his limits. You wait to see if it's fixable in like half an hour or you need to take another car. The waiting process takes another half an hour. Not fixable that fast. You call the base. You wait for someone to pick you up and take you to the base. You get another car, it's even worse. The shifter is fucked, the suspension is fucked, the equipment is fucked. The whole thing takes three hours You go to other patient, you do the thing, you call the base. Base is not answering. You wait another hour for them to pick up and send you somewhere. You do your job, you call the base. Again, not answering. Another half an hour of waiting. "Take a break, your next patient is at 3pm". You go eat. You get to the patient at 3:30pm. You do your job, you call the base. "Go back to the base". You take the longest way because time is money. You get off work. It's 6pm.
Rose, you do nothing and get payed. What's wrong with that? The wrong in that is that the whole thing is a shitshow. I do my job on broken equipment that is literally not fucking safe and my title suggest that whatever I do, I'll keep the person on that equipment fucking safe! We carry patients for the past week on a wheelchair where one of the wheels is hanging there by literall hope. The whole wheel can come apart at any time and I'm supposed to carry a heavy patient up the 9 flights of stairs? That's so fucked up. Our stretcher is also working as it wishes. The whole platform where they sit inside is built in such a way that if you're not fully flat - you have to lift them up but you don't have the space to do it fully stable so there is a chance they will just fall on the side with the patient strapped to them. The whole ambulace is rusted even inside. You don't carry oxygen with you, you have to come back to the base to get it because as the boss says "oxygen is expensive so you can't just carry it with you. What if you'll use it?" Like the whole point of having it isn't for a literall use! The abulance is built on VW T4 platform so for the patient to even get inside, they need to take a high step inside. Do we have a step or at least a beer case to put so it's easier? No, fuck no. Why? Oh because it's basic fucking thing to do? Well, who said that the boss cares? Literally yesterday our ignition broke. You want to know how we were turning the car on for the next 4 hours of our shift? We short wired it. Literally. We took out the casing of the steering wheel and we were short wireing it every time we had to start the car. You think it's fixed now? No, fuck no. And you want to know the best part? Everyone pays for that. It's your right as someone who pays health tax to be eligible for medical transport. But we also do private transports. Now imagine. You pay around 800 PLN from your own money only to find a yellowish rusted ambulance, with no easy step to get in and equipment that makes it hard to tell if it's even usable, at your doorsteps. You say that it would be easier if the ambulance would actually drive from the other side and you see the driver short wireing the thing to turn it on. I would say that I'm not going. I wouldn't allow anyone from my family to be driven by my company. None. I would decline every transport for my family members if it would be executed by my company. It's not safe. National Health Fund pays our boss to transport sick people in cars and on equipment that could potentialy harm them more.
Whole healthcare system is fucked so much. Staff is getting fired because hospitals lack money. Internal Medicine Department on hospital nr. 1 in one city has 15 beds on paper. That means one nurse and one "medical caregiver". On average they have about 23 patients. How? I don't know. But you think that director cares if they are way understaffed? That one nurse can't put the IV in while while also taking someone's blood and also checking if the patient from room 3 isn't flatlining?
Average waiting time on ER in one of the biggest hospitals in Silesia is around 6 hours, no joke, 6 hours. My driver's friend lost a brother there because he had to wait and literally died while waiting.
One of the biggest urology hospitals in Silesia has waiting time of around 5 hours even if we get there, as mediacl transport. We have piority. 5 hours, still.
Thrid largest hospital in Katowice had to close Internal Medicine Dep. bc they lacked funds.
One hospital around here had to close whole pediatric floor because they lacked funds and staff.
MSWiA I'm not explaing, google that shit had to fire half the staff because they wanted better pay and more staff. They fired people because they were understaffed but lacked funds to actually pay the remaining ones.
If you don't know anyone who works in healthcare, find someone.
If you know someone who works in healthcare, hold onto them for your life, they're your only way to get your National Health Fund healthcare in time you actually need to.
You know what they said to my uncle when he needed to do exams for his cancer treatment? Three years for free or 20k for private, and it's just for one and he needed 4 different ones. I went to the hospital where they had urology dep. while I was at work and dressed as EMT and asked if they can figure something out for him. "Yea, just get here with him so that I'll have his papers and we can figure something out in like a week". Do you understand how fucked that is? How much your uniform changes the whole situation of someone? In 3 years the cancer could be much more dangerous but in a week? It's nothing! The whole system is broken and fucked.
Hospitals are overpacked, waiting lists are unimaginably long, the whole system is on a path of getting private, there is no staff, if there is staff they are overworked and they make mistakes, there is no money for anything. Be mad.
Artemas dropped a new song and as a fangirl, I'm telling you to listen to it.
~Love Rose