Right, I give up…

Moving house and then a week away from internet connectivity has meant that I have no chance of catching up on all the blogs I subscribe to on Bloglines.

I’ve just spent the past six and a half hours trying to make a dent in the unread articles.

So I just hit the “Mark all as read”.

Sorry.

I’ll try to do better in future.

Picture the scene.

You are 60 years old, suddenly you have started to have real trouble breathing - it's like running a marathon and then being forced to breath through a drinking straw.

You have never had anything like this before, deep in your chest you can feel the wheezing as you breathe in and out.

It's night.

You phone your GP and he comes out to see you. He gives you eight tiny pink pills, and tells you that you need to go to the hospital as an emergency case. He calls for an ambulance.

Then he leaves.

I honestly can't believe this - you have a patient who is not only 'properly' ill, but is also rightfully scared. So how can you leave them at home and not stay with them for the short time it takes for an ambulance to arrive?

I know what would happen if the patient died - the Ambulance service would be blamed for taking too long to get to the patient, rather than look at the motives of a GP who is quite happy to leave a seriously ill patient alone.

I don't know how some people can sleep at night.

However there are a few GPs who stay on scene with their patient until we arrive - I always make a comment of thanking them for doing this. In return they seem surprised that the majority of GPs are happy to leave patients alone

Landed safely.

I'm now at work, and it's hard to think that it was only twelve hours ago that I was sitting on a plane, and twenty four hours ago I was in 'Coco Bongo' in the middle of Cancun's party zone.

On the way to work I came across a car that had flipped onto it's roof - of course I stopped to help (not out of concern for my fellow man, but because it counts as 'double time' overtime), luckily no-one was seriously hurt.

I'll do a proper post later (probably tomorrow), and then later in the week I'll subject you to another podcast. Then there are lots of emails and projects to start work on, including a revamp of this site.

At the moment, I'm thinking a lot about the people of New Orleans and the surrounding area. No matter what I do tonight, my work will be a hell of a lot easier than those trying to cope in hurricane conditions.

If I were religious, I'd be praying for them, but all I can do is wish them the best of luck.

...And then a scant half an hour after I post that the hotel has Wi-Fi the network I'm using goes down and stays down...

Still I (hopefully) land back in London at 06:30 on Monday morning, then I have a little sleep until my nightshift later that day.

Oh, and I'n entering this on a gawd-awul kiosk system that has a keyboard lie an old fashioned telephone.

Now I'm going out to a club. It's a hard life.

This hotel in Mexico, which while nice enough for me, isn’t what you would call a top quality place…

…It has FREE Wifi!

This alone would mean that should I find myself down Mexico way again, I’d choose this hotel.

It’s really a no-brainer.

However, dear reader, don’t expect a lot of posting as this hotel is not only sitting on the beach, but also has free food and drink…

So I may be otherwise engaged.

Oh, and a quick “Yay!” for my plane, for deciding to not nose dive into the ground.

Blogging for the next week will be, depending on connectability, probably very light.

Because I’m off to Mexico for a holiday this week.

All thanks to my brother who is paying for it all.  (Yes I am very lucky to have such a nice brother).

So for the next week I shall be reclining on the beach while trying to get the tan on my left arm to match the deeper tan on my right arm.  I shall also be sipping colourful drinks and admiring the scenery.

When I get back, I’ll take all the comments and emails on the accessibility of this site, and will have a major redesign.

Oh, and if a plane from Gatwick to Mexico plummets into the ocean, and this blog stops updating – then you know what has happened.

To whoever it main concern,

The feeling on the 'shopfloor' of the LAS is that morale is suffering.

I think that part of the reason that morale is so low is because of the lack of communication within the service. While we do get bulletins every so often, I would suggest that this isn't enough.

When there isn't effective internal communication there is opportunity for rumours to breed. So for the past two years the whole Agenda for Change process has been subject to some astoundingly inaccurate speculation.

As a consequence of of this rumour-mongering people are unsure of the future, and this does not keep a workforce happy.

So I would like to suggest how the internal communication within the LAS could be improved in a way that would cost next to nothing.

We are all aware of the banned unofficial forum, yet it has become one of the ways in which news is spread quickly throughout the service. While some of the reports on the forum are true, it has also become a breeding ground for false information through incorrect interpretation of official bulletins, and via 'friend of a friend' information.

A recent example of this is the rumour, or truth, as there has been no official word, of cameras being fitted in the back of new ambulances in a bid to stop violence against crews.

My suggestion is that there should be one place on the service intranet where selected people (station and sector reps, team leaders, DSO's and a person from each meeting group) can publish exactly what is happening.

Perhaps it could even allow comments from people on station.

In essence, internal blogging.

I understand that we have the internal website "The Pulse", but there are sections on that which haven't been updated since 2003, and while there is some good information on it, the focus is too broad, and it reads as if it has been written by a committee more used to making press releases.

A blog is extremely cheap and easy to set up, even easier to maintain, and can have multiple authors.

You can set up a way to post to it via email, so minutes of meetings could be published as quickly as they are typed up.

Imagine a situation where a crew can come on station, click on the link to the internal blog and instantly find out what is happening in their area, in the service as a whole and what was decided at the vehicle steering group.

If the blog allows comments (perhaps moderated), then when Team Leader 'X' mentions that they are having the stations on that complex repainted, then roadcrews could make suggestions about the colour of the paint.

This internal blog would not replace the traditional bulletin system but, for a miniscule outlay would actually enhance it.

I am, of course available for consultancy.

The usual disclaimers apply

This is a post that has been a long time coming, if only because I can't really think of a way to make it in the slightest bit interesting.

Agenda For Change.

The short (and therefore hopefully less boring) version is this.

The government want to standardise pay for the whole of the NHS, so they are splitting different wages into 'bands', from band 1 the lowest, to band 9, the highest. Within each pay band is a range of potential wages, so, for eaxample, pay band 4 starts at £16,004 and then increases in 6 increments to £19,284.

Band 5 starts at £18,698 and then increases in 8 increments to £24,198.

Are you with me so far?

To decide what banding each profession in the health service starts at a group is convened, and they "job match". So if for example you "Supervise fellow workers", or "At risk of potentially serious physical abuse", then you score some points and can be put into a higher band.

This is the problem that we in the ambulance service have - because of the things we are expected to do in our daily work, the government would have to pay us a lot of money.

So it has taken two years for them to try and work out how much to pay us.

They still haven't decided.

But today (actually I as was writing this) they published their findings.

Paramedics will be paid in band 5 (to be reviewed in 12 months).

They still haven't decided on EMTs (which is yours truly).

The bulletin that we have just recieved states that 'experienced' EMTs will be paid in Band 5, while less experienced ones will be paid less.

This is, frankly, a load of bollocks.

The reasoning behind the different increments within the band is that this is to represent increasing experience. The banding is supposed to represent what our job is.

EMTs all do the same work, so why I should I find myself working with someone who does all the same things that I do, has the same skills and has exactly the same job description, and yet gets paid a differing amount.

(But we won't know for sure for another two weeks...)

I can see a few things happening.

First, the Unions have all signed up for this, and so the general feeling from the crews on the road is that we have been sold down the river, this means that morale, which is poor at best, is going to plummet.

Secondly, I imagine that our ORCON percentage (our main benchmark of performance) is going to also take a nosedive.

Thirdly, it's going to cause friction between EMTs, paramedics and Team Leaders (who are on Band 6 despite hardly touching a patient). Especially when you consider that Paramedics are going to be paid their new, higher rate much earlier than any change in EMT wages. Add in the time that it will take for them to decide which EMTs are better than other EMTs and there will be a huge disparity in pay for quite some time.

My next post (assuming a Major Incident doesn't happen beforehand) will be about how the LAS could have lessened this problem.

Just to remind everyone (because at the moment I am incredibly angry, and this may explain any typos) is that the thoughts and views expressed here are mine alone - they do not reflect on my employer, or anyone else in the service.