Frog: The Secret Diary of a Paramedic
by Sally Gould
Simon & Schuster
Sally Gould called her book Frog because it is a nickname given to paramedics who are a specialist group dealing with the most critical patients. The rumour was that everyone they touched ‘croaked’, and even though the tenuous link is not in fact true, the nickname has stuck.
Sally’s father was a paramedic and she wanted a job where she could bring order to chaos in a variety of unpredictable places. Studying to be a paramedic at university, she had to keep a journal of what was happening and what she was learning on a placement.
She continued to keep a journal and when she graduated, she found out that there are so many things in the paramedic job description that university didn’t prepare her for in a job that gave her the autonomy to make life-changing decisions.
Using her journals as reminders, Sally takes the reader along with her in the day-to-day challenges a paramedic faces – from the urgency of the life-or-death situations to the absurdity of the non-urgent call-outs.
Then Sally shares the intimate details that neither university courses nor on-the-job training could prepare her for, particularly when dealing with patients whose conditions are “incompatible with life”.
The reader shares her exhaustion when she relates one night that she and her ambo partner had to deal with cardiac arrests, stabbings, the result of a high-speed motor vehicle accident and a schizophrenic female who was not taking her meds.
Trying to compartmentalise everything and present a professional front only did so much to protect her when dealing with real suffering and sometimes tragic outcomes. It was taking its toll and she needed help to cope.
Reading Sally Gould’s book is probably the closest most of us will ever get to the world of emergency medicine as she shares the highs, the lows, the camaraderie and even the humour.
Lezly Herbert
