Sundays can be busy, very busy. I think that they can be busier than Friday nights, my theory on this is that there is nothing on telly so people get bored and start drinking/drug taking early in the day, and all those people with minor illnesses have nothing to distract them.
Even so, yesterday was a nightmare.
At one point there were 16 emergency calls waiting for an ambulance to be dispatched, but all the ambulances were busy. One of the local hospitals was so busy it had to "Divert" (which is when everything except heart attacks, major trauma and cardiac arrests are diverted to another hospital), the other two hospitals in the area were also full to bursting and we ended up having to put 96 year old patients in corridors as there just wasn't enough room anywhere else.
Busy A+E departments mean that because of the lack of beds all those elective surgeries that were planned for today will have to be cancelled and this results in waiting lists getting longer. Waiting lists getting longer means you get a lower rating from the government and so they cut the money the hospital gets as punishment, which is supposed to mean that patient care improves. (And of course every decent doctor/nurse/radiographer wants to work in a "failing" hospital which does wonders for the retention of staff).
It's a nightmare situation and I can't see it getting any better until we get more hospitals, more staff or the general public to realise that "belly-ache" for three days does not need to go to A+E because they "don't want to bother their GP" and to educate the GPs that telling the same patient to dial 999 for an ambulance because they are busy is not a good idea.

/rant mode off

Seeing as the last post was perhaps a shade negative (and having promised the judge that I would continue taking the medication) I thought you might like to know about some of the good things about my job.
My crewmate and I went to a man having a fit on Christmas day, he is a security guard and built like a brick out-house. This fit wasn't your "normal" epileptic fit, but instead the man was more "punchy" and aggressive. To say it was a struggle to get him on the back of the ambulance is to say that Paris Hilton has appeared on the Internet. Cutting a long story short, the patient is diabetic and his blood sugar had 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 rather than just drive them to hospital.
Other benefits of the job include (but are not limited to...)

Working outside in the fresh air, I don't know how office workers put up with air conditioning.

I also like being my own boss. Maybe this is why I don't find "The Office" that funny.

Driving on the wrong side of the road with blue lights and sirens going, it's not the speed its the power

Being able to poke around people houses and feel superior even though you haven't done the washing up for two days.

No matter how annoying the patient is, knowing that within twenty minutes it'll be the hospitals problem.

Meeting lots of lovely nurses, and knowing that I get paid more than them.

And on the rare occasion being able to help people who are scared or in pain.

After yesterdays surprising number of genuine jobs it appears that reality has returned. So I find myself dealing with the usual rubbish. What is worse is that despite living in an "ethnically rich" borough (where the official figures are 53% ethnic minority) all the food shops are closed for Christmas and I'm starving to death. With all the Muslims around you'd think some would ignore Christmas and stick around to keep McDonalds open...
My normal foul mood has returned and so I offer the following words of advice, Don't call an ambulance if...

...You have haemarroids and after having a "poo" there is a streak of blood on the toilet paper.

...You are pregnant, have contractions every 30 minutes and your husband will "follow the ambulance in his car".

...That you are worried that your bellyache for the last three weeks hasn't gone away.

...You had some drinks last night and now have a headache.

...And finally, if your urine infection hasn't vanished after taking one of the 28 antibiotics you were prescribed.

I'm off now to find a kebab shop that is open, or die trying...

Sorry I had to interrupt that last post but the call which rudely disrupted my post was an old boy who'd fell over and broke his hip. It was one of those jobs where you really feel for the patient and try everything you can to make them more comfortable. The family helped us out and in the end thanked us, so I guess we did a good job. We also had a security guard who was slipping into a diabetic coma, unfortunately for us he wasn't going quietly, instead he was fighting and thrashing and spitting all over the place. Once we'd worked out what was wrong with him from the limited information his workmates could give us it was just a simple job of an injection to effectively "cure" him and bring him back to normality.
There were another couple of jobs just like that and it was this that made it a really strange day...everyone we went to actually needed an ambulance. And it wasn't just me, other crews reported exactly the same thing. All we need to do is keep that up for the rest of the year and I will be a very happy bunny indeed.

Merry Christmas, I'm at work at the moment and have had to deal with a woman who doesn't understand that antibiotics might upset your stomach and a bloke who has had a fit after taking some ecstacy at 9:30 in the morning. Oops, got a call...better go.

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, but 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 its nighttime, 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 stations new DVD player (bought out of staff funds, so no we haven't been defrauding the NHS) while the hunger 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 its a cat as it is so threadbare it could be anything. This cat is so stupid it lies in front of your amublance just when you need it the most, and refuses to move until you physically have to kick lift if gently out of the way. However it is intelligent enough to realise that when someone is using the microwave there will be an opportunity for begging five minutes later (thirteen minutes if the food is frozen).
So I nearly fell over the damn thing stepping away from the microwave, only to spend the next ten minutes discussing with a mouth full of 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.

The London Ambulance Service is giving us poor Ambulance drivers 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 (thats 127 kilo for those using "new money").
I was asked by a friend what I thought of them, and having just finished my "Familiarisation Course" (four 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 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) and as our insurance is £5000 excess it'll mean a lot more money going to vehicle maintenance.

Should be fun, but I can't see them letting me drive one...I estimate if I can squeeze through gaps by driving until I hear the crunch...

Reasearch carried out by the London Ambulance Service for the new "No Send" policy has shown that 59% of Londoners think that they will get seen quicker in A+E 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.
Also Londoners call for three times the number of ambulances for "flu" than any other English city. Half the time the patient has got a cold and not the flu at all, and just needs to work it out of their system. Even if they did have the 'flu, there is little the hospital could do for them anyway.
Coupled with high population densities, lack of staff, "sleeping policemen" everywhere and heavy traffic and is it any wonder we are having trouble hitting the eight minute deadline we have to make 75% of calls in?

Previously (on WIHH, my old Blog) I'd posted about how dire the health of Newham was. So it comes as no surprise that the chances of getting MRSA are "high" in Newham General Hospital. In fact they are 13th from the bottom of over 100 hospitals in the UK.

Of the many good things about working for the London Ambulance Service (along with the chance to meet new and interesting drunks) is that you find out all the juicy gossip before it hits the papers. Want to know what the police were doing down Stratford High Street at 3am Thursday morning? Curious about the traffic accident that made you late for work? What about the recent spate of heroin deaths? Something I can now tell you about, the critically ill one is dead (the hospital turned off his life support) and there have been at least another two deaths (one of which I dealt with). I wonder if it will make anyone give up heroin? Knowing the "average" user I seriously doubt it.