I’ve had a couple of people send me this.

 “Nursing staff from a Telford hospital have been accused of using an ambulance as a taxi after a night out.

 It was claimed some of the nursing staff got into an ambulance outside The Swan in Ironbridge on Sunday.

The ambulance service has found a crew did provide unauthorised transport to staff but said it was not in operation and returning to base at the time.”

To be honest this tends to happen a bit.  You tell the nurse “hop in the back, we’ll give you a lift – if we get a call you’ll have to hop out again”.  It helps keep relations good between the hospitals and ourselves, and it doesn’t hurt anyone.  It definitely doesn’t remove an ambulance from service.

In fact it can do good – a crew I know was giving a nurse a life to the train station after her shift finished, they then got a call to a cardiac arrest and the nurse was able to help out.  As long as the crew weren’t refusing calls, then I can’t see the harm in it.  In London I’d imagine that our Control would love it – as it would mean we are out ‘roaming’ rather than sitting on station, something Control management are eager for us to do.

And if I’m going to spend all shift taxiing drunks around, I don’t see why we can’t sometimes help out the poor buggers who work their fingers to the bone looking after those same drunks.

I wonder if the person that complained is the sort of person who expects an ambulance to turn up seconds after they’ve cut their finger?