Just some back from my favourite job of the last four 12 hour shifts...

Patient is 6 months pregnant and she is feeling the baby move. Given to us as "Abdominal pain, pregnant - Category 'A'".

Had to take her out of our area to the maternity unit she is booked under.

Panicking neighbours were telling her it was early labour (Quote I've had three babies)

At least the patient herself was fairly pleasant...

If this format is funny, it's because I'm posting on the move, pocket PC and Smartphone...

Yesterday was the attack of the friendly old women. All of our patients were 85+, and all were really pleasant, normally healthy women who had experienced 'wobbly episodes'. This led to it being a rather pleasant shift.

My crewmate had the first half of the shift off - so, while I was single, I was used to take broken ambulances to the places where they could be fixed, taking fixed ambulances back to their respective station, and dealing with various office related chores. One of the benefits (or drawbacks) of being on a satellite station, is that you rarely see anyone from management. However when they spot you at the main station, they can hit you with all the paperwork that they have been saving up for you...

At the moment everyone is either being congratulated, or warned depending on the amount of sick they have taken. Unfortunately they don't discriminate between 'normal' and 'industrial' sickness, so I fall into the 'warning' category. Not a major problem, it just means that they will keep an eye on my sick, and we will work out how it can be improved. My personal contribution will be trying not to swallow anymore HIV+ vomit during the course of my work, or having epileptics sprain my thumb while I hold them down.

As mentioned, I'm not the only one - but it has been noticed that they are doing this just before Christmas, when (for some reason), the number of people going sick increases...

Of course if they want sickness to improve, they need to stop sending us to people who are ill.