Research carried out by the London Ambulance Service for our ‘No Send’ policy has shown that 59% of Londoners think that they will get seen quicker in A&E (Accident and Emergency department) if they arrive in an ambulance.
This … Is … Not … True …
In fact, if you come to A&E after calling an ambulance for something minor, the nursing staff will be more inclined to send you out to the waiting room and forget about you.
I was an A&E nurse for a long time – just trust me on this …
Also, Londoners call for three times the number of ambulances for ’flu than in any other English city. Half the time the patient has got a cold and not ’flu at all, and just needs to work it out of their system. Even if they did have ’flu, there is little the hospital could do for them anyway.
Coupled with high population densities, lack of staff and vehicles, speed-bumps everywhere and heavy traffic, is it any wonder we are having trouble hitting the 8-minute deadline we have to make 75% of calls in?
The London Ambulance Service is giving us poor ambulance staff shiny new ambos to drive … well, puke yellow rather than shiny … but they are new. These are Mercedes Sprinters outfitted in ‘EURO RAL 1016 Yellow’ which is apparently the most striking colour available and is used throughout the European Union. They have lots of nice new bits for us to play with. Most importantly, they have a tail lift so now we don’t need to break our backs lifting some 20-stone lump into the back of the motor (20 stone is 127 kilograms for those using ‘new money’).
I was asked by a friend what I thought of them, and having just finished my ‘Familiarisation Course’ (4 hours of playing with the new toy) I must say I do like it. Not only is the engine more responsive when moving off, but the brakes also work that bit better than our old LDVs (Leyland Daf vans) and the interior is much more professional looking.
The only real problem I foresee is that the tail lift needs around 4 yards to unload the trolley and around London this means that we will have to park in the middle of the road, blocking off other traffic. So, if you do see one of us blocking your way, please realise that there is no way we can park the things and be sure of being able to load a patient on board as well.
These things also cost £105 000 each and if we get the slightest scratch on them they have to be taken off the road and repaired (unlike the ones we have at the moment where they are beaten up until they stop working). Since our insurance has a £5 000 excess it’ll mean a lot more money going to vehicle maintenance.
Should be fun, but I can’t see management ever letting me drive one … I estimate if I can squeeze through gaps by driving until I hear the crunch …
While I thought that parking to allow the tail lifts space would be a big problem, our biggest problem would turn out to be the regular breaking down of the lifts.
I had my hair cut today, which has become a weighty decision in my mind. It goes something like this …
(a) Do I get a crop or not? If I get a crop I’ll look like I’ve just been released from a concentration camp; if I don’t then I’ll look like a paedophile.
(b) Will my mum like it? If not then I’ll have to put up with 3 weeks’ worth of moaning about how terrible I look.
(c) Will this cut enhance my ability to attract members of the opposite sex? To be honest, no haircut has ever done this but I live in hope.
(d) If I go to my local hairdressers will I get the trainee … and if I do will it be possible to get a refund?
Anyway, I went in and got a ‘short-back-and-sides’ and rather unfortunately I’m deaf as a post when I’m not wearing my glasses (for those who have 20/20 vision, you don’t wear your glasses when getting a haircut). So when the whole place erupted in fits of laughter I didn’t know if it was because of a rapidly growing bald-spot.
(Still while I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.)
The best I can say is that I’m not having to brush my hair out of my eyes with a pair of gloves covered in someone else’s vomit.
Which is nice …
I’m sitting here single on station (you need two people to man an ambulance, and if you haven’t got anyone to work with you are ‘single’ and therefore unable to work. However, you need to stay on station in case they find someone else in London who is single. In that case you find yourself trekking across London to work in a place you’ve only seen on telly). I’m hungry and bored, partly because it’s night-time, and partly because there is no-one else on station.
However I have a plan …
To counter the boredom I have a DVD I can watch on the station’s new DVD player (bought out of staff funds, so no we haven’t been defrauding the NHS). The hunger problem will soon be solved by the microwave curry I have sitting in my car.
Let us now introduce a new member into the cast: when I said I was alone that was a bit of a lie, there is the station cat. Well at least I think it’s a cat as it is so threadbare it could be anything. This cat is so stupid it lies in front of your ambulance just when you need it the most, and refuses to move until you physically have to kick lift it gently out of the way. However, it is intelligent enough to realise that when someone is using the microwave there will be an opportunity to beg for food 5 minutes later (13 minutes if the food is frozen).
I nearly fell over the damn thing stepping away from the microwave, only to spend the next 10 minutes discussing with a mouth full of chicken korma why it wouldn’t like to jump up on my lap and make off with my dinner. It went a little something like this …
Miaow.
‘No you can’t have any.’
Miaow.
‘You wouldn’t like it.’
Miaow.
‘Go eat your own dinner.’
Miaow.
Gets up, plate in hand, to check that the cat does indeed have food/water/toy mouse.
Miaow.
‘Will you bugger off!’
Miaow.
At this point I put the plate (still with some of my food on it) on the floor, which the mangy beast sniffs and turns his nose up at. Said ‘cat’ then goes and hides under a table.
Horrible bloody creature.
It’s now dead; there is only one person on station who misses the bloody thing.
My crewmate and I went to a man having a fit on Christmas day; he was a security guard and built like a brick out-house. This fit wasn’t your ‘normal’ epileptic fit, but instead the man was punchy and aggressive. To say it was a struggle to get him on the back of the ambulance is to say that Paris Hilton may have appeared in an Internet video download. Cutting a long story short, the patient is diabetic and his blood sugar has dropped to a dangerously low level. Luckily, we carry an injection to reverse this, and after wrestling with him in order to give him this drug he made a full recovery before we even reached the hospital. This is a nice job because we actually helped someone