There has been another fire in London where residents were evacuated due to gas cylinders being on site. This is the third such fire in one week.
Are we sure it isn't some mad arsonist who would like to see some explosions?

I've made an Amazon Wish List; mostly it's for the benefit of my brother who has real trouble thinking of things to buy me for my birthday. (It's over on the right hand side dude). It's also so that when I end up in HMV I can log onto it over my smartphone and realise exactly which DVD box sets of Buffy I have.
For everyone else, please don't look at it and try to work out my psychology, it either won't work, or you'll get the wrong idea about me...

Unless you agree with my taste in which case I congratulate you for being so astute.

I do believe I wrote that I thought that the night would go fairly easily; due to the large number of ambulances that would be on the road (Double time pay for today would mean that all overtime would be filled up completely).

Oh well, goes to show how wrong I can be.

We were out for most of the night, unable top catch even a ten minute nap and consequentially we were tired and prone to "Sense of humour failures". If there was one thing we needed last night it was a sense of humour.

The first job was to an elderly man who was found by his community carer laying on the floor covered in bloody vomit - the carer had put a duvet under the mans head, but hadn't tried to clean him up in any way. Instead we managed to clean him up a little in the back of the ambulance. He was quite ill and ended up in Resus.

Then we got into the type of job that characterised the rest of the night - a drunk male, surrounded by police who was adamant that he hadn't been assaulted (as we had been told) and who didn’t want anyone bothering him. This was fine by us as he was belligerent towards the police (who were just trying to help him) and us (who couldn't care less about him). The police were happy and told him to go home, but that wasn't good enough for him so he threw himself in front of the police car and lay down. Needless to say this didn't impress the police so they arrested him. Getting him into the back of the police van was funny to watch - especially when a very young copper ran over to tell us that "He looks like he is about to vomit", to which my reply was "Well stick his head out the van door then".
The police took him away, but we met up with him again at the London hospital after he feigned unconsciousness in the police cell. His saga ended with him sharing the "piss-head" bench outside the A&E with another four alcoholics.

We then got a "swollen throat", category “A”; which turned out to be a sore throat, with no airway obstruction, that the patient had been nursing since the morning. He sore throat also meant (for some reason I can't understand) that she couldn't walk in anything more than a shuffle. The walk from reception to the waiting room at Newham hospital took a couple of minutes.

Then we went to a 15 year old girl with a sore throat for two weeks that had called NHS (re) Direct they had then told her to call an ambulance!

Then we had the patient that I would have quite happily dropped out of the back of the ambulance while doing 70mph down the A13. We got a call from the police to a "fitting male". When we got there, the "fitter" was standing up, chatting to the police. The story was that he was an epileptic who during the night had got drunk, taken some cocaine - and when arrested (I don't know what for - but given the pub, quite probably affray) had had a fit. We walked him on to the ambulance and got halfway down the road where he proudly told us that he had faked his fit because he didn't want to be arrested - and instead had tickets to see West Ham in Cardiff. He then asked us if we could drop him off at his house.

I told him to "Fuck off out my ambulance" and kicked him out. To be honest he is lucky that is all that we did to him.

All during this Control were holding emergency calls all over London...We had over 3,700 calls yesterday.

With a bit of luck he'll be beaten up by Crystal Palace fans after the defeat of West Ham at the Cardiff Playoff.

The rest of the night continued in a similar vein, with our last job being an RTA on the A13 where a car drove into the back of another - the rear car driver had ran off, and the other driver didn't travel and was left in the care of the same police who dealt with our first drunk.

L.O.B. means "Load Of Bollocks", as in "This call is L.O.B". Last night was L.O.B.

I was only at our station for the first bit of the new Big Brother, but that was enough to make me want to stab all the contestants.

If we could just get the Americans to air-strike the house, Britain would be a much nicer place to live.

I've just imported all my old posts from "Why I Hate Humanity" - my first Blogger.com Blog.

It's interesting looking at the old stuff, I think I was a bit more hateful back then, I gave writing fiction a bit of a go, and I thought it was a big commitment to post at least once a day.

Now I don't find it strange to post from work, or on the move

Still it's nice to see that I haven't learnt anything about grammar or even being particularly interesting.

At least I'm using a spell-checker now

A very funny article here commenting on the fire in Leyton that destroyed a load of "art".

I've also added a "Recipric-roll" for people who link to me, but I don't necessarily read every day - If you link to me and I've missed you out then feel free to let me know.

I'm working tonight - Friday night, start of a Bank holiday, plenty of pubs (if only the weather was warmer I'd have nothing to do all night but pick up drunks). Today is a "Stat" day, which means that I earn more money for working tonight - I'm going to guess that there will be a lot of ambulances on the road tonight as everyone grabs for that extra overtime. So I'm hoping it'll be an easy night.

I'll let you know.

I've been on a "Guidelines" course, essentially this is a course that tells us that we are already doing the right thing, and to introduce a new "book" with our treatment guidelines in in. It takes two days and tomorrow will include learning about child abuse (do we have to bring our own child?) So far the course has been a trainer telling us that this course changes nothing, and we are to continue doing what we are doing at the moment. At least the days are short, 8am 'til 2pm. At the start of every Powerpoint presentation is the same definition of "Clinical Governance".
We had to write our own scenarios - then swapped them around to other groups (this is a really easy teaching technique - you don't have to plan anything). There was also a chat about how our complaints to compliments ratio is about 50/50, and that most of the complaints are because of "staff attitude". So far I have had no complaints, and no compliments - I'm a strong believer of flying under the radar.

However there is a problem - the Guidelines book we should be getting is version 3.0, but the book we are actually getting is version 2.2.
The reason for this? Copyright. It seems that the London Ambulance Service wants to change a few bits to make it more relevant to London. But because the organization that wrote it maintains the copyright - it can't be changed for us. Lawrence Lessing's "Free culture" and the Suw Charman article I linked to on the 25th both state that you get value added when others can build on your work. This is a perfect example of this principle.
So the people of London are not getting the best clinical care because of copyright.

Clinical Governance is about getting the best care to the public, so it's a bit of a mixed message.

Here is the BBC report on the fire I told you about on Sunday. There is a second one now, not that far away. I suppose the investigation department will be busy deciding if the fires are arson, or if they are connected in any way.

Our MDT computer system is failing at least complex wide at the moment - we have been told to use radio communication as a back-up. Is this another virus on the system, or some failure of the entire infrasystem?

Tomorrow I have a *groan* two day teaching course, based around "guidelines". We are moving away from protocols and more towards deciding what we want to do on the fly. At least that is the idea I've been given by those who have proceeded me on the course. I've also been told that it is immensely boring - i think I'd rather be at work.

I worked for eight years for a hospital trust that got Zero Stars for two years running. It was almost a point of pride for us, we knew it was bad and there was a type of blitz mentality which kept us all working there instead of moving to a "nicer" hospital.

Newham General has been both slammed and praised, for those that are interested this came from the Newham Recorder.

THE bosses of Newham General Hospital have been hit with the worst scores nationwide for patient satisfaction, treating them with dignity and their confidence in doctors.
In other rankings based on patients' views, the Accident and Emergency Department was slammed as the second dirtiest out of 153 hospital trusts in the country, and outpatients' toilets the worst, according to The Sunday Times Good Hospital Guide.
But Newham Healthcare NHS Trust achieved a "startling drop" in the mortality rate from 16 per cent above expectation in 2001/02 to just five per cent above in 2002/03.
Death rates are a "critical piece of data" in measuring performance – and Newham's was the joint sixth biggest fall nationwide. This huge achievement pulled it into the middle ranks of trusts.
A&E waits are still too long, with one in five patients kept waiting longer than four hours during the period surveyed, it was said.
But the Trust won praise for prompt delivery of lifesaving drugs to heart attack patients, and scans for stroke patients within 24 hours of admission.


(I've deleted some of the stuff, not about the A&E so as to not infringe copyright Read the full article here)

Actually NGH isn't as bad as most people make it out to be, they saw 94% of all patients within four hours in the past two months, they cope as well as possible with perhaps one of the worst designed A&E's I've ever seen, and they have regular agency nurses who are generally excellent.

If I were ill I'd go to Newham. I'd stay away from the Royal London, have to drag me kicking and screaming into King George's and you wouldn't catch me dead at Oldchurch hospital.

Suw Charman has written this long but excellent article about copyright. For my particularly un-lawyer like mind this subject normally confuses and bores me, however Suw has written a clear description of the arguments for "loosening" copyright.

Go, read, digest.

So...

You want to cross the street?

Can you see an ambulance with flashing blue lights coming towards you?

Then just ignore it!

We probably won't hit you

I took this video earlier today, hope you enjoy it and see what form of idiots we have walking the streets of Newham.

I woke up this morning to find out that Richard Biggs had died; for those of you who saw it, he played Dr Franklin in the TV series "Babylon 5". He was in his forties, married with three children, with the oldest being six years old. My sympathies go out to his family and friends.

Our complex is EIGHT ambulances short today, so it comes as no surprise that we are running around like the proverbial blue-arsed fly. Control keeps broadcasting jobs for which they have no ambulances, this means that a lot of crews are more unhappy than usual, as Control hassles us about "greening up" quicker. It doesn't bother me however, as if I'm busy doing jobs, it makes the shift go quicker.
As I'm typing this an ambulance has had a blow-out on the fast lane of the A102 - a very busy road. The crew are alright, but it means we are now nine ambulances down for the next two hours at least.
The jobs I've been doing are the usual Monday morning sort of stuff; 97 year old women having heart attacks, 10 year old boys with cut heads (a rather impressive 3 inch cut, mind you) and 88 year old men from nursing homes who have "high blood pressure" - they invariably have a better blood pressure than I do.

Now some silly sod has stabbed himself in the stomach with a pair of scissors.

I've just got further information on my last post - it appears that the place that is on fire contains normal gas cylinders - one has already blown up (spreading a lot of ash and debris around the place) and there is at least another cylinder on the premises.

I hope all the Fire personnel there take care, earlier today one of their number was killed in Cardiff possibly from an exploding cylinder - my thoughts go out to his family and friends.

This is all hearsay, so take it with the same pinch of salt that I'm taking it with.

There has been a fire in East Dagenham, apparently there is some form of "residue" from the fire and police have evacuated all residents in several blocks radius. There was no "get your toothbrush", it was "you are coming with us now!" The residents are now being looked after, possibly in quarantine, in a number of hotels.

East Dagenham is rather well known for having lots of nasty chemicals in the soil, and a long history of the use of asbestos - so it is likely that this is the reason why these steps have been taken. I'll try and find out more in the next couple of days.

This whole story ccomes from a friend of my brother, who is caught up in the whole thing.

Sunday alone in my flat, no work, no stress, some decent stuff on telly = Good
No chocolate in the fridge, uniform to be ironed, work tomorrow = Bad

Phone call from Occupational health telling me my blood values are back to normal = Excellent (Only HIV/HEP test to go now)