...Someone else takes over. A fairly new blog, but so far very well written, very enlightening and I hope that Zinnia keeps writing. I sometimes have to deal with the first hour of grief, what do you say to the surviving partner of a 60 year marriage when he wakes up to find his wife dead in the bed next to him? Zinnia deals with them further along the path of grief, and can help the survivors to move on.

Go, read the blog now, that's an order!

I've mentioned before (ad nauseum) that we need to reach 75% of Emergency "Cat 'A'" calls within eight minutes.

A new Station officer moved into ********* station (they know who they are...) - He told them in his opening speech, that he didn't think that any of them were special, that there would be no 'family friendly' rotas, that there would be no 'special leave' (which is leave you get on short notice if, for example your house floods, or your child gets ill and you can't get a carer) and he told them that if they didn't like it, they should go to work on a building site.

The amount of patients reached in those magic eight minutes went from 75% of all calls to 17%.

The crews weren't on a go slow, they still got there in the same amount of time, they still looked after the patients to the best of their ability - just that they recorded on their paperwork that every time took nine minutes. (The 17% would be the calls that legally need accurate time-keeping, like cardiac arrests, police jobs and the like.

New Station officer got called up in front of the bosses, and has now been moved to an office job, far away from the station in question.

It is so much more civilised than going on strike.