I heard yesterday that orcon will soon be reduced to 6 minutes, as they will be starting the 8 minutes from the orignal call taken in control its only going to get tougher, will be ringing through the patients like a check out girl in Tescos soon.....

Blimey, that makes grim reading. So if the caller stutters through nerves, can't clearly describe the problem (maybe due to head injury/learning difficulty/language problem/age) - or just plain waffles on - that comes out the eight minutes?

Numeric targets are the bane of efficientcy IMO, they appease people who glance at headlines though and that's where any counterpunch to this also needs to aim.

new skill for Tom : Driver of Blud wagon uses Blackshadow to go on the Northcircular to find a patient.
http://www.jems.com/news/232672/

New Motorcycle Fire-EMT Program in Florida

MIAMI: Rescue workers may establish a motorcycle fleet that will help them save lives on Florida's highways. Under a proposed program, Miami-Dade County firefighters would respond to emergencies on specially designed motorcycles, navigating through gridlock to accidents before other emergency vehicles arrive. All county firefighters are trained as emergency medical technicians and would have access to defibrillators, oxygen tanks and first aid equipment. The Miami-Dade County Commission will consider the program on 19 November, 2002. Click here to review: "EMT-P-Operated Motorcycle Rescue, A Preliminary Note," by Staten, C., EMT Journal, Vol. 4, No. 2, June, 1980. (Requires Adobe .pdf reader/viewer)

so when do the talks with SJA NHQ start about a drive to get more sja community responder teams up and running. as some ambulance trusts use SJA for A&E work.

Just seen a news report on this mornings local telly prog.
"Local ambulance service misses 3000 life threatening calls in 8 minute target in last 6 months".
Marvellous...just what we need....more ill informed crap from the media.
Why cant they remove all the inappropriate Cat A calls from the 3000 before releasing to the press? This would show that we only missed maybe less than 100 genuine life threatening jobs. (And that was probaly due to the inappropriate high level response given by the AMPDS system!).
In this world of targets and audits we never see the true outcome of a 999 call being published...ie there should be some retrospective analysis of the call such as the "Severe respiratory distress" being reclassed as "sniffles, has a head cold".
If we go to a 6 minute response then we need to get rid of AMPDS and look at a more realistic system.

i coudnt agree more, i went to 5 unconcious calls yesterday.... not a single one had been unconcious in the last 24 hrs!!! I feel the genral public need more education on when to call for an ambulance, instead we have these "reailty" programs such as "trauma"... when do they show crews being sent to some one with a cold or a cut finger, or a 23 yr old with D&V for 2 hours who could be bothered to call his gp!!!!
If the goverment want us to meet these incresingly hard ORCON targets, they need to inform the pubic of correct use of the emergancy services!!! The AMPDS systems is awful it gives us no info about what we are going to... it needs changing.. and quickly

It really does my head in the way this government puts ludicrous targets on things and then fiddles the books in order to make it look like people are meeting the unmeetable targets. WHY??? What is the point? THere is no point, all it means is some more people get to shuffle some more paper, they get to appoint another Minister for Pointless Paperwork and those on the frontline get to mop up the mess. Most of what this government does irritates the hell out of me but this is one of the most annoying things, second only to them wanting to put a microchip up everyone's arse so they can monitor their location, movement, ideas, spending patterns and thoughts. And that was my rant for the day, thank you for listening.

Becuase the ******* MPs who set these targets are nothing more than overblown management consultants who have never had a real job in their lives.

I've a friend who works there if thats any use!

You can request any item from the Biritsh Library through your local library, for a small fee. Just pop along, join the library and fill a form in.

The eight minute response originates from defibrillation. This was not 8 minutes to drive to the call but eight minutes from caller picking up the telephone and dialling 999, through to delivery of the first shock. It was considered that a heart that was not beating for more than 8 minutes had less than 2% chance of being re-started. The earlier CPR is started and the earlier fibrillation is reversed to a sinus rythym the better. Does that help??
BobF

That's stoopid.

Like basing it on average orgasm time.

Does that mean we get to follow the Simpson's "ma'am, there really isn't a WRONG way to restart a heart using a downed power cable" (paraphrasing and so not expecting nor implying legal or medical liabity there?!)