The cat is indeed, out of the bag. Ambulance personnel across the Complex know that I blog, they worked out my nom-de-plume (the only 'falsehood' on this site) mainly because of a picture or two of myself I have on the site. So far the response has been along the lines of "You want to take that picture down, you look like you've just escaped from the Day Hospital", and someone wrote a vaguely negative comment in my last post, to which a tonne of very nice people leapt to my defence.

I figured it would happen at some point - a few people knew about it a while ago, but kept it their little secret, so I have been prepared for this day. I've actually been prepared for it since I started posting about my ambulance work, so very little, if anything will change on this site.

  • I've added a little "these views are mine alone, not those of the LAS" to the intro over on the right of the page - it's always been implicit, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to make it explicit.


  • I've always maintained confidentiality, both of patients and of staff, trusts don't normally get that privilege because they need to be held accountable for the things they do. I've deleted one post that could have possibly identified a member of staff - it wasn't an important post, but I thought that it came too close to crossing the line that I have set myself.


  • I'm convinced that this blog shows the LAS, and the NHS in a generally good light - I do tend to fixate on the negative side of things, so I may try to be a bit more upbeat in the future in order to provide a bit of balance. This promise may be unlikely to be kept...


  • I don't think that "Da Firm" is going to try and make me stop blogging, if only because they tolerate the "Big White Taxi Service" website and forum, and I believe that there is some subtle use of that site and forum to understand exactly what the road-crews think of various issues. I have at least one very smart person who has volunteered to defend my blogging should management try to stop me. Although if they did try to stop me, I'd blog about it, and I think it would greatly increase my page hits...


  • I'm going to keep writing under the name Tom Reynolds, I'm kind of used to it, and people know me by that name anyway. Tom is my middle name and I prefer it to my actual forename. And my mum will hate me for saying that...


  • I fully expect to be called a wanker by some people in the service - but I would imagine that those would be the people who haven't actually read this site, and were just hearing rumours about it. That and I am fairly thick-skinned. My crew-mate knows about the site, although I don't think that he has read it himself, but he is supportive of my writing. I'll soon let you know if I get called into the office though...


    • For the next seven days, I am working shifts from 16:00 to midnight, and as an exercise I shall be keeping a tally of people who's illness or injury is caused by alcohol. On these shifts it is often half our calls that are related in some way to drink, and by publicly keeping count, I fully expect the universe to toy with me and make sure that none of my patients are drunk - so that I look like an idiot.

    But I doubt it.