lots to write about, and no time, sounds like.

4 x nightshifts, plus stupidly busy doing other seekrit stuff, plus Christmas, plus running a WoW Guild, plus trying to sleep, plus more seekrit stuff, plus writing this.

Good job I'm not chasing after women as well.

"stupidly busy doing other seekrit stuff"
Is it so secret you can't even tell me?

Seems every ambulance blogger in the world was working last night. I was rushed off my feet, but I didn't take a single interesting call. Everyone was drunk and had fallen over or been assaulted. It got a bit repetitive after a while.

Yep, it got a bit silly at one point... Next posting methinks.

Does your heart sink as much as mine when a call resolves into "29 year old male, collapse ?cause, location - outside XXXXXXX club/pub".

I didnt have a single drunk person last night, amazing! And i so wanted to use the 'drunk bus'......

Slightly different industry (financial networking - yawn), but we've been averaging over 30,000 transactions a minute today. Busiest shopping day of the year so far. So if you're feeling shitty on shift tonight, and you're snowed under with poorly people again, take heart - it could be worse.

You could have been trying to do xmas shopping today.

Nasty.

yeah, just a *slightly* different industry :)

I am smug, today I took delivery of my last box from amazon today. Yay for stress-free Christmasses!

Same here, Amazon, Goddess of single shift-working men who have no intention of plodding around the shops thankyewverymuch.

Oh, and Argos.

I often wonder whether the Government persecutes the right substances so, out of curiosity, what percentage of your calls are related to use/abuse of alcohol and what percentage to dope? By the way, I don't smoke so my question isn't biased.

In...oh 12 years or so working for the health service, I would say that roughly...

40% of calls during the day are alcohol related, about 80% at night.

0.000000001% at all times due to dope.

(i.e I can only think of two patients in 12 years that I've dealt with due to the use/abuse of cannabis)

This excludes any Schizophrenics which may/may not be related to the use of cannabis, but even then it's still a tiny, tiny number. Also we are yet to see a cannabis using older population with all the disease that smoking anything will cause you.

But in the long run, I'd rather alcohol be banned and pot legalised, if only because I've never had anyone on pot try to hit/spit/kick/bite me.

Thanks, that's what I thought. I do like my odd glass of wine but I'd gladly give it up if that meant we could get rid of all alcohol related illnesses, accidents and violence. You must have an incredible reservoir of patience, I don't think I could deal so diplomatically with self-distructing drunks. You have my admiration.

Hi Tom,
Has the new law on longer drinking hours had any impact on your work or is it about the same as this time last year?