“I still hold patients’ hands if they need it”

Åse did not recognise right away the middle-aged man who knocked on the station door and was now introducing himself. His face seemed familiar, but she only recognised him when he told her why he had come.

Two weeks earlier, Åse and her co-worker had been on an emergency ambulance response to his home, where he was lying lifeless after suffering cardiac arrest.

“He was dead when we arrived, but we managed to resuscitate him. He would not have survived if we had arrived just a few minutes later. He came down to the station to thank me and my colleague,” Åse says and adds:

“When we had talked together for a short while, he shook hands with me and drove off on his motorbike. It was a very nice experience. A real sunshine story.”

Åse Sjökvist is attached to the Falck station on the island of Värmdö, two kilometres outside Stockholm, the capital of Sweden. Falck operates the ambulance service here, which serves the 34,000 permanent residents of the island.

Ambulance transport over longer distances

Åse Sjökvist has worked on ambulance teams since 1990. Since then, the quality of the prehospital system in Sweden has improved significantly. As in the other European countries where Falck operates ambulances, Swedish hospitals have specialised and closed down a number of small hospitals.

This means that the ambulances have to transport patients over longer distances, and ambulance teams must be able to stabilise patients while they are in transit to ensure that their condition does not deteriorate.

“When I began working on ambulances in 1990, just about our only opportunities were to give patients oxygen and to hold their hand. Back then, we used to say we gave them gas pedal treatment – meaning that our job was to get patients to the nearest hospital as quickly as possible,” says Åse.

“We can do a lot more today”

Today, the situation is very different. Speed is still an important factor, of course, but the paramedics now carry a large number of different drugs so that they can immediately start treatment and continue whilst taking the patient to the hospital.

“We can do much more for patients today. The most important task in my job is to save lives and minimise injury. And we have much better chances of doing so nowadays,” says Åse, who regularly receives additional training.

The job is not just about professional skills. The ability make patients and their families secure and in good hands is also a key factor.

“It is actually just as important as maintaining a high level of skill. You cannot provide optimal treatment if the patient does not trust you. Therefore, you must be calm and trustworthy. You must explain in a calm and quiet manner who you are and what is going to happen. Then patients will relax as much as they can,” she says and adds:

“And I still hold patients’ hands if they need it.”