I've just got back from doing my 'bit' on Scottish radio, and although I'll probably be commenting more when I can hear it from the radio archives I thought you might like my initial feelings as to how it went.

Dramatis personae

Bob - Vehemently anti-blogging businessman
Ian - Pro-blogging journalist
Nick - Lawyer who has helped write 'blogging policy' documents
Yours Truly - Befuddled newcomer to radio

First impressions of the BBC are good - a nice clean entry hall and public spaces leading to what can only be described as radio-geek heaven, plenty of blinking lights, boxes on shelves and wiring. I almost feel at home.

I'm led into a little box studio, told to put on the headphones and talk into the red microphone - I try to get comfortable, but am having minor attacks of nerves. Over the headphones various producers as me if I am alright.

I'm on! A little introduction by the host, and then his first question "Tell us about your job?".

Erm...what do I do again? I have a vision of me dressed in a green uniform doing something to a sick person. I answer the question badly.

"Tell us about why you blog?" - Aha! Something I prepared for. A wander through a little bit of history which probably doesn't make much sense.

Then Bob enters - described as very anti-blogging he goes right on the offensive and calls me...Racist!

Because, it is apparently racist to ask my readers which language I should learn in order to better understand patients who don't speak English. So in trying to better serve the people of Newham (and Bob doesn't know where Newham is, let alone our population demographics) and learn a language that is understandable to our 'client group', I'm labelled as racist.

I give what I think is a fairly good response (did I laugh at him on air?), and I didn't need to swear.

If I was racist, I wouldn't work in Newham, and if I wrote anything racist, I'm be disciplined by work so quickly it'd make my head spin.

("Hot Asians" was about how half my work that night seemed to be Asians with high temperatures, and I was trying to be witty, comparing it to a top shelf magazine. Disliking drunks I'll admit to - and you wouldn't like them much if you died of a heart attack with no ambulance to send because we were all busy dealing with 'people who drink to get drunk').

There then follows a bit of a chat about how Blogging is publishing without boundaries that Ian is happy about, Bob is dismayed over, and Nick is cautious over. Ian then goes on to steal a number of points that I wanted to make, which is good as he is a much better radio performer than I.

Sensing the end of the piece, I try to fit in as many of the points that I wanted to talk about as possible - so it probably came out as a rambling stream of consciousness gabble. I Get cut short before I can start name-checking people, I then feel disappointed that the piece wasn't longer as I think I was starting to get into the flow of things.

Interview over, I am thanked and slink off back home - not entirely happy with how it turned out, but I'm not suicidal about it either. I'll see how I feel about it when I hear it played back.

If you want a look "behind the curtain" then you can look at what my notes consisted of (.doc document)

If any of the people who were involved in the show want to talk further - my email is on this page, feel free to get in touch. I'd especially like Bob to get in touch to see if he really believes what he was saying, or if he was just taking a very 'anti' position for the purposes of the piece.


And thanks to everyone who offered me some advice, it was all good and I think had the piece been a bit longer I would have had more chance to shine.

Hmmm, perhaps a podcast?

For those that are interested in such things, I have been asked by BBC Radio Scotland to appear on one of their programmes to discuss the whole 'employee blogging' thing. Also on the programme will be an internet lawyer, a pro-blogging journalist and an anti-blogging employer. So it looks as if it might be an interesting discussion. I think my role is to show how employees who blog are not some form of secret-leaking, confidentiality breaching, libel monsters.

It's the first time I've ever been on the radio - so I'm a little nervous, I've already asked some very clever people (who think about blogging for a job) for advice, which I think I'll follow, plus I'll be putting in some hours to gather notes on current ideas in blogging, so I (hopefully) won't come across as a complete idiot.

The programme starts around 10am this coming Monday, and you can listen via the website - and if you miss it, then they archive the programmes for a week, I'm appearing on the Gary Robertson show.

The only sad thing about it is that I don't actually get to visit Scotland, instead I shall be sitting in a studio in London, which is still plenty exciting for little old me.

Advice/comments/warnings gratefully received.

Offers for me to write books, write columns, appear on the TV, open summer fêtes or appear in pantomime will be considered.

As an 'on-the-road' update, it appears that the hospitals in East London are all full to bursting. Newham hospital A&E is full, and there is an extra bed on each of the wards. I'm guessing that this bed is in the day room, or somewhere similar . Other hospitals are in the same state.

Apparently there is a strain of Influenza 'A' doing it's worst in the community.

Newham hospital has been admitting 60 people a day, rather than the more usual 45.

Oh dear...
Update: And then the suspension on the ambulance breaks and we end up bouncing around the motor like Mexican jumping beans. My crewmate is now searching for a spare ambulance for us to use.
Posted from my mobile

For those that are interested in my plans to rule the world - E-Health Insider has just published an article which contains an interview they had with me late last year. There may also be some interesting news in my next post... Stay tuned on how you can best serve your Future Benevolent Overlord. It seems that Urdu would be the language of choice for best being able to communicate with the people of Newham. Of course I may well give it up as a bad job - but I'm at least willing to give it a try.


Last night was a fairly easy shift - once more we didn't get to see the ambulance station, but then again this is getting to be the normal state of affairs. We didn't go to anyone who was particularly ill in a life-threatening way, and very few people tried to dive in front of the ambulance while we were speeding around on blue lights.

However we did quickly spot the trend of the night. It's often true that you will have runs of a particular type of job, you'll have lots of people complaining of chest pain, then you'll do nothing but children who have fallen over and so on and so forth.

Last night was the turn of the "Hot Asian".

Yes...I know that sounds like one of the magazines you can get from the top shelf of your local newsagent.

I'm not sure if there is a specific infection doing the rounds at the moment, or if it is just because people's immune systems are lowered, or even if family visits have been spreading infection over the holiday period, but fully half of the calls we went to last night were for Asians with high temperatures.

All these patients had one thing in common, despite having ragingly high temperatures, they were all wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing, two quilts thrown on top of them and the central heating blasting out at maximum. The reason for this is quite simple - when you have a high temperature, your body gets confused and makes you feel cold, you may even start shivering. So the patient complains that he is feeling cold, and the family despite knowing that the patient is hot decide to try and cook them.

I often get looks of shock and horror when I tell them to remove the quilts, remove (most) of their clothing and throw open the windows. "But", they say, "He says he is cold!". Well, when your temperature is 39.8 Celsius (103.6F) you really should be cooling them down, rather than trying to roast them. It is the same with children, a child gets a temperature and feels unwell, mother decides to wrap them up nice and warm.

It is a happy side effect of travel in an ambulance that, if you open a window and drive fairly slowly to hospital, the patient will have had time to cool down and will be feeling a lot better by the time they reach hospital. I've lost count of the times I've told disbelieving people this, only to have them become firm converts to the "Keep 'em Cool" school of thought. Lets just call it health promotion by demonstration.

Oh - and all the patients and their families were really nice and pleasant, even the two teenagers who we picked up from a motel who had obviously had their night of nookie ruined by a temperature of 39.1 Celsius (102.3F).

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.

I've often mentioned that the ambulance service and the police tend to get on rather well together, this is at least in part due to us both being called to the same jobs, and probably because we share the same view of the "Great British Public".

An example, we got called to a drunk who was being verbally abusive to a bus driver - we were called because the drunk had fallen over, while the police were called because of the abuse. The drunk man was obnoxious, and well known to both of our services, and because of the lack of an injury was left in the care of the police. If he had been injured then the police would have left the matter in our hands.

So, when we co-respond, the ambulance crew pray that the patient is uninjured, so the police have to deal with them, while I suspect that the police hope that the patient is injured so they don't have to arrest them.

However, there are a lot of specialist teams in the police service that we tend not to come into contact with that often, we mainly get to meet the normal 'beat' coppers. Thankfully we rarely see the murder, child abuse, drugs, or dog teams. This isn't to say we never see then (and our station did get a Christmas card from the local murder squad telling us to 'keep up the good work'), it's just that it is fairly rare.

So it was rather surprising that I met with the dog handling team twice last week. On the first occasion, we were called to a known schizophrenic who had threatened to kill herself. The patient herself (a regular attender at the local A&E) was a bit of a pain to deal with, she wanted to stay at home and kill herself and couldn't see why we couldn't let her do that. Her dog, on the other hand, was a real pleasure - happy to see us, interested in smelling all our equipment and extremely friendly. As the police were already there, they got the dog squad to look after the animal until the patient was discharged from hospital.

In case you think I am being harsh on the mentally ill, the patient attends A&E every day with the same complaint of wanting to kill themselves...she hasn't managed it yet

The second time I saw the dog handling team, was when we had to gain access to a house where the patient was unable to come to the front door and let us in. The interesting part in this story is that there were five dogs of unknown temperament in the house. For half an hour the police unsuccessfully tried to gain access, mainly by climbing up a ladder and trying to open a bathroom window. We were able to talk to the patient, and so we knew that they weren't badly hurt, otherwise we would have had to kick the door down. Then the dog team turned up, and using a top secret criminal technique, managed to get the front door open in about 10 seconds, thus putting to shame the half-hour everyone else had spent trying to gain entry.

All five dogs were really lovely, although energetic - and at the end of the job I had to spend 20 minutes brushing the dog hair off my uniform.

There is a joke we have about dogs. When we ask a patient if the dog is friendly, the patient always answers that they won't bite, the reply to this from the ambulance crew is to add the unspoken, "They only bite people dressed all in green".


Finally, to reply to some of the comments and emails about my posts about 24 hour drinking. I suspect that part of the problem is the term used. We should stop using the phrase "Binge Drinking", and instead use the term "People who drink to get drunk". I think that might clear up a lot of confusion...

A little while ago I was interviewed by the BBC, if you are interested you can read the article here (it also makes mention of The Policeman's Blog, a constantly enjoyable read). But surprisingly not the exceptional Real E Fun.

If you are new to this blog, then a good place to start would be the sidebar section on the right 'The Story So Far'.

Also on the BBC website is a little piece about fears from the Royal College of Physicians concerning the changes in the current licensing laws, something that I wrote about two posts back. The government would like you to be able to buy alcohol all day, rather than have you 'binge drink' to get yourself drunk before closing time.

When the change was first proposed I thought that it would be a good idea, but bitter experience has made me change my mind...

The government seems to think that without a time limit on drinking, people won't drink as much. Sorry to say it, but the reason a lot of people go out to drink (at least the ones I meet) is to get incapably drunk, then to continue arguments (or make up new ones) so that they can beat seven shades of Hell out of each other.

Current UK youth culture doesn't seem to allow for sensible drinking - not when it is seen as socially desirable to get 'legless' and when asked how a night out went people are proud to talk up how drunk they got. Without a sea-change in the attitude towards drinking, 24 hour licensing will be a disaster.

The ambulance service got as many calls in the first seven hours of the New Year as we would normally get between midnight and four pm. Was this purely New Year 'celebrations', or because of the vastly extended drinking hours? Why were a lot of these calls for people being assaulted, when New Year is supposed to be a time for celebration?

I haven't come across the obvious comparison that if the government think that increasing access to alcohol will reduce the health/crime costs of it's behaviour, then why don't they increase access to all drugs, for example heroin? Won't that lower the health/crime costs of all other forms of drug abuse?

The other argument is that by staggering 'closing times', then there won't be as many fights over kebabs and taxis. While true that this might reduce fighting between strangers, most of the people I see assaulted know their assailant - and have probably been sharing drinks all night.

Add in the people who think that the police won't be looking for drink drivers at 11am, and you have a huge potential for injury.

Most of our regular attenders are alcoholics, and we are finding younger and younger alcoholics every year. I'm starting seven shifts of 6pm - 2am, and experience tells me that most of these calls, and night-shift calls are for drinking.

With constrained drinking times, we know when there is a likelihood of trouble and our management plans resources accordingly, which is why there are (if manning permits) more ambulances on at weekend nights. I'd imagine it is the same in the police force as well. With the introduction of 24 hour drinking all that planning goes out of the window.

So what all this above post means is this...

...I've already broken my resolution to be kind to drunks.

Yesterday there were around 5,000 ambulance jobs across London (estimated by there being 4,925 jobs at 23:22) That is compared to the more normal 3,200-3,500 that occurs during the rest of the year.

And we only have to wait another 363 days for it to happen again.

...Or maybe not. The number of calls we are going on has steadily increased over the years - perhaps by the end of 2005 it will be normal to have 4,000+ jobs a day.