CSK: The A&E department saves lives round the clock
Ambulance emergencies and heart attacks. Broken legs and serious infections. At the A&E department the staff are used to taking care of all kinds of patients.
Jenny Persson is an assistant nurse specialising in putting people's broken bones in plaster. She can’t remember how many patients she has plastered.
– You never know what patients can turn up, she says.
That is why she likes working in the A&E department.
– You never know what ’s going to happen when you come to work. That makes things interesting, says Johan Österman.
He is an ST doctor. That means that he is fully qualified as a doctor, and is now training to become a specialist. In his case, a specialist in the treatment of casualties. He will be an A&E doctor, a new title and a new type of training.
– Our aim is to have nothing but A&E doctors and specially trained nurses and assistant nurses in the A&E department in ten years’ time, says Erik Wall, who is head of the unit for A&E doctors.
The staff like having contact with their patients, enjoy the variety in their work and appreciate their colleagues. But the work is demanding, both physically and mentally. The worst thing is seriously ill patients who do not recover. It is very stressful, they work all out all the time.
– The A&E department is a mirror of the community as a whole. We see loneliness, the need for help, how health centres perform, the legal system – we come into contact with all kinds of people, says Therese Bachman, head of the nurse and assistant nurse unit.
In some casualty departments in Skåne violence and threats of murder have occurred.
– Verbal threats have increased and become more serious. We’ve had shooting incidents in Kristianstad as well, says Erik Wall.
The staff at the casualty department at CSK tend to stay on at the unit.
– It’s probably easier to hold on to staff here, because the work is so varied. The people who do leave do so mostly because they can’t manage to fit together their working times and their other committments, says Therese Bachman.
All in all, 160 people work in A&E, every day there are 70 on duty.
