Smudger Snippets
Created | Updated Apr 28, 2005
I suppose it's because I have so much time on my hands these days, that all these memories come flooding back to me.
Dealing with Disabled People
I was watching a programme on TV the other night and I saw something that really got to me. The programme had, amongst another things, cabin staff for an airline being trained in all aspects of their future employment. Part of this training was to lead a blind person up a flight of stairs and into their seats. I could not believe what I was seeing!
This is how they were encouraged to do it:
They would split into pairs and take it in turns to lead each other. To start them all off, the instructor took a blindfolded trainee by the arm and proceeded to demonstrate the procedure to the class. What came next really shocked me. The way he patronised the blind person (blindfolded trainee) was so embarrassing that I actually cringed just to watch it. I know, for a fact, that if anyone did try to lead a blind person like that they would probably get so much verbal abuse from them that they would feel very embarrassed.
I know, from past experience in the ambulance service, that blind people would hate to be talked down to and patronised in that way. They are far more capable and independent than us sighted people could ever imagine. Yet there seems to be a certain attitude that people have towards disabled folk in general, even the way they just talk to them. For example, I have always noticed that if someone is in a wheel chair being pushed, everyone tends to talk to the person doing the pushing, and totally ignores the person in the chair.
Another thing I have noticed is that when people talk to anyone in a wheel chair they seem to stand close to the chair and talk down, loudly, to the person. It would be far more polite to show just a little respect and kneel down so that they are talking eye to eye as it were, on the same level. It is these little things that mean so much to the person in the chair. I know, as I have seen all this from both sides as it were.
One time, while I was in the ambulance service, I had to work with a different partner as my usual one was away on holiday. I didn't envisage any problems. He had done the job before as he was what we called a 'relief1'. So, we started off on our shift together. It was my day as the attendant2 so the relief was to be the driver.
Everything was going quite normally. We arrived at our designated hospital and escorted all the patients that we had picked up on route into the out-patient department. Then we were asked to transfer a patient in a wheelchair from that same hospital to another one close by. This job was not on our list and meant that we would have to forego our break in order to carry it out. Even though the two hospitals were only three miles apart, it meant driving through the city centre which could take around forty five minutes just to get there.
Although this was annoying for us, as it meant not having a break for a long time to come, we simply had to do it. This fact seem to annoy my partner for the day, who slammed the back door of the ambulance. So I said that I would go up to collect the patient, while he had a smoke and this appeared to calm him down somewhat.
As usual, when I arrived at the ward, they were not ready for us, so I had to wait a while longer. Eventually the patient and I arrived at the back door of the ambulance and I pushed the chair up the ramp into the back. I then tied the patient and the chair down with the usual straps we needed for this - it was normal procedure when the patient was 'chair bound' and could not transfer to a normal seat. So we set off and I was chatting away to our patient in the back. Then I noticed that we were being thrown around quite a lot more than necessary. So I went up and asked him to slow down and take it a bit easy, as there was no point in rushing as we knew it would take more time due to the traffic. This seemed to upset him even more, as he pointed out that this had never been said to him ever before!
Once we had arrived and I had taken the patient up to his new ward, I returned to find him putting away all the straps and tidying up. So I suggested that he sit in our spare wheelchair all tied in like the patient had been earlier and that I would drive us back. I went on to explain that I would drive the first part of the journey the same way he drove us there and then I would drive the other half the proper way. He appeared to find this very amusing, but still agreed to go along with my plan, so he was still laughing I tied him in.
Inside the cab of these ambulances there is a mirror which allows the driver to keep an eye on all the patients in the back. Well not long after we had left, I had a few looks into this mirror as I broke harshly, speeded around roundabouts and then took off from 'stops' and 'give ways' at speed. The look on his face was priceless; the fear showed through his earlier bravado, so much so that I decided that he had had enough.
I then slowed down and drove the rest of the journey the same I would like to be driven if I was in the back, tied down in a wheelchair. After we had arrived back, he could not wait to get out of the harness. He started to accuse me of exaggerating the whole experience but, deep down, I think he knew that I had not. In the end he grudgingly agreed that the whole experience had changed his attitude.
Although the fact that he spent most of his time on A&E ambulance work did count in his favour he admitted, in the end, that dealing with wheelchair patients was part of this earlier training when he first joined the service. The idea occurred to me that it would be a good experience to carry out a similar exercise for every one who handles people in wheel chairs. Maybe, then, they would find that their attitudes may be different towards them.
