Two posts in one day? Surely not!

This post has very little to do with actual ambulance work, and is more a request for advice.

As I may have mentioned before (in various comments if nothing else), our ambulances don't have restraints on the trolley beds, something that I happen to think is a real danger, both for patients and for the crews transporting them. Having had a chat with management, they have agreed that if I can put together a proposal then we can take it to the health and safety/vehicle equipment steering groups.

So my first request would be, if anyone has any useful supporting evidence (or evidence that doesn't support) the use of restraints in ambulances, I'd be grateful if you could point me in that direction.

Next up, I'm looking to learn another language - I know that I can't get my head around French, and I would like to have the language be actually useful to me. So my question is, what language should I learn to most be able to communicate with the non-English speakers in Newham. (Yes I do think that if you live in England then you should make some effort to learn the language, and that spending 10 years in the country and not being able to understand the language is rather disgraceful, but I am a pragmatist).

I'm thinking that Bangladeshi would be a pretty good choice as Newham has the second largest population in the country, with Tower Hamlets next door having the highest population. But perhaps Arabic would be a good language to learn as we have nearly 25% Muslims in Newham, and I'm led to believe (perhaps incorrectly) that Arabic is a Muslim common language. Maybe I should just do a little survey of the people who I pick up, who don't speak English...

Suggestions via email or the comments areas please.

Finally, it's the time of year for the Bloggies, where you the public vote for your favourite blogs. While it might be seen as blatant whoring, I've seen lots of other blogs do it, so I'll ask those interested to nominate me in either the Best British or Irish, or Best Topical blog (or both...I'm not fussy).

It was the usual type of busy last night - we heard rumours that there is such a thing as an "ambulance station", a mythical building where one might use the toilet or partake of the life-giving "cup of tea". It must be a myth, as we never saw it at all.

As I have mentioned, we get our calls sent down to a computer screen in the ambulance cab, sometimes you wonder how the Control crew have entered it, while keeping from laughing down the phone at the patient. A case in point was one of our calls last night which was given as "53 year old male, taken 3xCrack cocaine, cold and lonely, needs to be put back together".
Avoiding the rather obvious "Humpty Dumpty" jokes, we soon realised that the complaint, and the location he was calling from fitted one of our semi-regular callers. By the time we got there he had left the phone box and neither us, nor the police could find him after a search of the area. Obviously I was distraught...

Our other stand out job of the night was a 57 year old male fitting. We quickly made our way to the location, to be met by a block of low-rise flats that often sneak up on you in our area. These are three or four floors high, and have no lifts. Also there was one of our first responders. We entered the block, and immediately made our way to the stairs (it is a little known law of physics that in flats with no lifts, people on the ground floor are never ill - only those on the top floor).

Entering the flat, the general state of disrepair, mess and the 3 litre bottle of strong cider I tripped over tended to give the impression that it was owned by an alcoholic. We got into the living room to find a large man laying senseless on the floor, while his daughter was sat over him stroking his hand, trying to reassure him. A quick check over, some oxygen and a chat with his daughter revealed a history of alcoholism (surprise!) and the occasional alcoholic fit. He was a big man, so we packaged him up in our carry chair and carried him down three flights of stairs. All the time his daughter was saying how strong the nice ambulance men were - which only goes to show that she wasn't paying attention to my reddening face and struggles for breath...

We got the patient into the back of the ambulance where, he started to fit again - this time lasting about 2 minutes, he also decided to bite his tongue and vomit - which meant that the back of the ambulance (and myself in some part) was covered in bloody, cider-smelling vomit. I think I've mentioned before how I can't smell alcohol, yet I can smell cider...and it turns my stomach. We packaged him up and 'blued' him into Newham, where he had another two fits (despite some rather strong sedation) and by the end of our shift he was still in resus having infusions of Phenytoin and Pabrinex.

So a busy night without the chance to see our station, with at least one mopping out of the ambulance... pretty standard really.