Medical Emergency at the Music Festival is the latest short medical story taken from my medicaltales blog. I hope that you enjoy reading it
My wife and I decided, at short notice, to slip away for a short weekend break. We’d both been working hard and felt we deserved it. We drove to the delightful village of Edale in Derbyshire and booked into Bed and Breakfast accommodation; lodgings we’d enjoyed on a previous visit.
The weather forecast was for fine, sunny weather, so we set off to climb Kinder Scout. We followed the well-trodden path up Jacob’s Ladder, passing the waterfall, and reached the top without difficulty.
It was on the way down that I came a cropper. To this day, I don’t know how it happened; perhaps I simply wasn’t looking where I was going, but one minute I was strolling along without a care in the world, the next I was flying, head-over-heels, onto the stony path. I escaped with a bruise on my forehead, wounded pride, and broken glasses; they had snapped across the bridge. I dusted myself off, then patched up my glasses with some adhesive plaster from my first aid kit and resolved to be more careful in the future. We continued on our way and completed the walk without further incident.
The day after we returned home, I again packed my bags. For the last three years, I’ve acted as a medical officer for a well known music festival. I form part of a small team of doctors, nurses and paramedics from both the county ambulance service and the St John’s Ambulance Brigade.
Our brief is to provide immediate resuscitation and triage should an emergency arise in the crowd. We are supported by a ‘snatch squad’ who are able to dive into the mass of partygoers, many of whom are fuelled with alcohol and drugs and hoist out anyone who collapses. It wasn’t long before I received a message in my radio earplug, to say they were bringing in an unconscious collapsed male in his late-20s.
He arrived two minutes later. We had no couches at the forward post, so the stretcher was laid on the floor, and I knelt down to assess him. I had to adjust my glasses which were sitting rather cock-eyed on my nose.
Most of the festival-goers who needed treatment had problems due to a combination of alcohol, opiates, diazepam derivatives, amphetamines, and dehydration. This man was moderately deep with a Glasgow Coma Score of 5-6. He was hypoventilating and his oxygen saturation level was low. I set up an intravenous line, administered fluids, and gave him some initial Naloxone. Anxiously, I knelt over him to judge his response. I needed to decide whether he could stay on-site, or if he required transfer to the local hospital for more intensive treatment. A paramedic and several others in the tent watched, equally concerned.
Slowly, he started to stir, then gradually opened his eyes. He gazed up, looking at me intently. He then started to speak in long, drawn-out syllables, accentuating his words with vague uncoordinated movements of his arms.