"Let's do great things."

-Warren Ellis

He's right.

For some time I think I've been coasting on this blog, much as I've been coasting in my life. The blog has degenerated into 'watch me have a nervous breakdown' while I write about the same old things. Likewise, while I have started hating my job and while feeling generally burnt out I've been doing very little to change this.

The credit crunch is a good excuse not to look for work, as is the lethargy brought on by working rotating shifts. Writing about the same old thing has worked out fine for me so far so why should I change it?

Before the Christmas break I applied for a different post within the LAS, that of 'Web communication officer', a role that I consider myself uniquely qualified for. Unfortunately I wasn't successful in getting it. I am not going to speculate on the reasons why I didn't get the post, but in any case 'on paper' I shouldn't have even been given the interview that I was granted.

As part of the preparation for trying for an internal promotion I've been keeping my blogging 'safe'. I've not been writing about the plummeting staff morale and some of the reasons behind it, about how our adherence to government targets has had a negative impact on patient care or how some of our ambulances have been dangerous to use.

Keeping these things quiet has been causing me no end of internal turmoil. When writing this blog I've always tried to be as honest and open as possible, yet I found myself sitting on stories that really should be made public. For the sake of my career I've been toeing the company line. It's been costing me sleep at night as the things that I should be writing about rattle through my head.

Well, no more.

Realising that I'm going to be stuck at my current level for as long as I work for the ambulance service has freed me to become honest again. While I will still write about the jobs that I go to and congratulate the ambulance service for the things that we do well, I will now also be writing about the things that we do poorly.

But it's not enough for me to just write about the things that directly impact me, I'm going to start digging for information. Using information gathered under the Freedom of Information act as well as talking to other people within the service I hope to bring the truth, warts and all, to this blog.

I'm going to try thinking like a journalist.

There will be some longer pieces by myself that will be properly researched and actually drafted and edited (unlike how I normally write which is 'first draft goes up after I run it through a spellchecker'). I will also be working on preparing a 'safety net' to enable me to keep paying my rent should I be disciplined by LAS management.

My goal? To have questions asked in the house of parliament, to try and change things for the better for as many people as possible and to change my own life for the better.

The other thing that I've been guilty of is that of letting things happen to me - Most of the good, interesting and fun things that I've done related to blogging have not been initiated by me, instead someone or some group has approached me with a request. What I need to do is be more proactive in seeking out opportunities and maybe creating some good things for myself and other people. To do this I'm planning some new projects and will be looking for collaborators to help me out with some of these.

As always the only resource that I have to spend will be my time and energy - something that I have in short supply. I plan to get around this by reorganising the way I run my life, streamlining things like the amount of RSS feeds I read and cutting down on playing World of Warcraft*.

So - I'm returning to this blog with new direction and hopefully some more vigour, reworking some projects that I've left fallow and hopefully joining up with some people to create new and interesting 'stuff'.

Let's see if I can do 'Great Things'.

*I've only managed to increase the level of my Warcraft character by four in the last two months which shows my flagging level of commitment to it...

Talk about teamwork: The First Responders-H bring pack pride to Lightning's Edge (US) in a big way. This two-and-a-half-year-old, multi-game clan had cleared most of Black Temple prior to Wrath's launch, is digging into Naxxramas with a vengeance and, beyond WoW, maintains a well known and successful XBox team.

Their tactics: military precision – literally. The First Responders are primarily firefighters, medics, police officers and military personnel. The guild accepts civilians on a case-by-case basis, emphasizing common attitudes about teamwork rather than the usual min/maxing or gear focus of other guilds. While their nontraditional schedules may dampen progression speed, it certainly doesn't dampen their enthusiasm or guild pride.

From the always entertaining WowInsider

I wish that there was an EU equivalent, preferably Alliance though...

I have two 'friends' on my Xbox - and one of them is my brother, perhaps I'm just not that social.

...And today's winner for 'Most inappropriate use of an ambulance despite repeated mass media warnings' goes to the normally healthy man suffering from a cold for the past three days who picked up a phone, dialled '999' and asked for an ambulance, in order to get it to transport him to his GP for an appointment.

After the crew 'had a word' he decided that a taxi might be a better bet.

Rumours that if the taxi crashed en route the crew would be be suspended for not conveying the patient are, of course, unfounded.

David Nicholson (Chief Executive NHS)

"The ambulance service is not close to breaking point. It's tough, there is pressure on them, but I think they are responding fantastically well. Staff are absolutely responding to provide a fantastic service to our patients"

Peter Bradley (Chief of the London Ambulance Service)

"The increase that has come this winter has been far more dramatic than normal. It has been the most difficult ten days I have seen in the last ten years. It is absolutely horrendous. Hospitals are full and A&E departments are struggling. We have got ambulances having to wait longer to offload patients and that is causing difficulties."

Who do you think has the better idea of the state of the ambulance service at the moment? I know who my money is on and it's not on Nicholson.

On Monday the London ambulance service went to REAP 4. The REAP system runs from REAP 1 (no problems with the service) to REAP 5 (the sort of problems you get after all the power stations blow up and there are plague rats running on the streets of London).

We have never been at REAP 4, and if you ask the road crews in London they would probably say that we should have been at REAP 4 a couple of months ago.

From the official London Ambulance website

"Ambulance staff responded to 20,939 emergency incidents across the capital in the seven days up to last Sunday (14 December) – an increase of nearly eight per cent on the average of the previous four weeks. The pressure has been compounded by high percentages of calls initially treated as being Category A (immediately life threatening), and delays caused to staff at hospitals while waiting to hand over patients.
As a result of these ongoing issues, the Service today raised the declared pressure level at which it is operating from ‘severe pressure’ to ‘critical’ – the first time that it has reached this level since the capacity levels were introduced in late 2005."

The national news has been full of this story and there has been constant coverage that the 999 service is to be used for only 'genuine' emergencies...

...and obviously it has worked because five out of my nine calls today were to simple chest infections that could have been treated at home, seen a GP, or just sit and wait for it to go on it's own. None of them were sick enough to need an ambulance - but they called and we responded. I suspect it will be a similar story tomorrow.

We also had two hoax calls.

But I'm preaching to the choir.

It doesn't help that we had an outbreak of Norovirus at one of our local nursing homes, something that has led to a local hospital opening an isolation ward in order to safely cope with the influx. I'll tell you the full story of that night in a later posting.

Today, like many others of late, there were multiple calls being held waiting for ambulances - some of these calls would have been covered were it not for people picking up a phone and using the same number you dial if someone has dropped dead in front of you for their case of a 'nasty cough for the past three days'.

There are too many patients, 80% of whom don't require an ambulance, and not enough ambulances.

What doesn't help is that the politicians are ignoring the problem and trying to pretend that it hasn't all gone to the dogs. The politicians are being dishonest (yet again) and so, it would seem, are the executives of the NHS. Rather than admit a problem and make some sort of plan to improve it they lie and spin and lie some more. Just notice how they call a massive (30%) increase in calls a 'pressure' rather than a bloody disaster that we have seen coming from twelve months away - it's not like Winter just sneaks up on us does it?

And on Friday it's 'office piss-up' day.

Bloody great.

The only good thing about today has been a group of us stretcher monkeys getting a good result from a cardiac arrest. If this post reads a little weird it's because I haven't slept a wink in the last 36 hours and have just completed a 12 hour shift. At least the hallucinations haven't started yet...

Rather busy at the moment (more on which later), so I've just got time to throw you a link to a section of the new London Ambulance website (which I happen to think is quite a good site, much better than the old one).

It's about drinking too much, and the accompanying video sums up some of my night shifts pretty accurately.

The wife looks at my me and my crewmate as we lift the chair with her husband in it onto the back of the ambulance.

"You both must be very strong", she says.

I reply with a joke, normally about how my crewmate, half the size of me, is actually the stronger of the two of us.

-----

But what I want to say is that the lifting is the easy part, the real strength is needed with the things we see and the patients that we deal with.

It's the strength that you need when you have picked up the fourth severely demented patient in a row, they curl up on our trolley having been unable to move for many years, their arms and legs contracted into the foetal position. Their bodies are skin and bone, as we pick them up their joints creak and crack and they shriek in our ears, long nails dig into our arms.

It's the strength that you need when driving the ambulance and you hear them start to cry in the back, your crewmate holds their hand and tries to reassure them but they can't get through. Instead all you can hear is the sobbing and the noises that are left them now that language has gone. they can't tell you if they are in pain or are scared - instead all they can do is moan, and cry and scream.

It's when you walk into a nursing home full of the demented elderly. Stuck on the walls outside the doors to their room are photographs from their prime. Happy mothers holding their children, proud men standing to attention in military uniform. Sepia memories from the past, what they were, not what they are. You open the door and the person in the photographs is lying on urine sodden sheets, legs heavily bandaged from ulcers that will never heal, with hands constantly grasping for something imaginary that floats just out of reach. The person that they were is gone, all that is left is the shell, no expression behind the face that smiled all those years ago for the photo outside the door.

Then one takes hold of your hand and looks up at you with bright blue eyes and asks if you are their dad, long since dust.

And your heart breaks.

I don't know how much longer I can do this.

Mostly linking to other people this week because these particular sets of night shifts are knocking me silly.

A couple of days ago I wrote about some attitudes towards homeless folks - there is another group of patients that engender a similar response, that of the heroin overdose.

Peter Canning writes (another) excellent post about the use of Narcan in opiate overdoses. I've got to admit that I've been guilty of 'punishing' overdoses in the past when I was a bitter and twisted A&E nurse, although in part that was in collusion with the A&E doctors.

Now I've taken a much more relaxed attitude to heroin overdoses, a nice slow administration of Narcan while I breathe for them with my ambu-bag, a chilled out little job with the overdose waking gently and peacefully. If you can maintain the patient's airway for them, and keep them well ventilated then there is no rush for the Narcan at all.

Makes life better for the patient, and better for the ambulance crew. Because who really needs to be the person put into instant drug withdrawal, or be the person who gets punched because they put someone else into instant withdrawal.

And if, as a crew, you are nice and relaxed then the patient's fellow junkies tend to be nice and relaxed as well - and I like nice and relaxed.