It was one of those days when the sun was shining, everything seemed right in the world and both my crewmate and I were happy to be working. Normally these feelings don't last long as you find yourself wrestling with an aggressive drunk or something - but we were enjoying it while it lasted.
Our call came in as 'pregnant female, fell over', not a huge problem - people fall over all the time and babies tend to be pretty well protected while still in the womb. Reaching the scene we found a woman who was doing a good show of not being distressed, she had tripped over and now couldn't feel the baby moving. There was no pain or bleeding, and everything else checked out fine.

The LAS policy is that we should take the patient to their 'booked department' - this patient's department was a fair way out of London, it was actually in Essex. As it was so far away (it would take us 40 minutes to get there), I called up Control to ask permission to go there, they agreed that it was in the patient's best interests and so we started the drive.

I'm glad we have satellite navigation, that's all I'll say...

As we pulled up to the hospital the patient's mother arrived and was very grateful that we had brought her to 'her' maternity unit, we then handed over to perhaps the nicest midwives ever and went to do our paperwork. While there we waved a 'hello' to a confused looking Essex ambulance crew. We don't often get out that far from London.
'Greening up' we returned to our patch and continued working.

It was only a few jobs later that we found ourselves going into the Royal London Hospital, this was a good thing as we were getting hungry and the London Hospital has a McDonalds opposite - great for the healthy ambulance diet that I, and my belt, have become accustomed to. I wander in there to get my 'Cheeseburger, fish burger and Big Mac' when who should I bump into other than the ambulance crew we waved at back in Essex.

They had done a transfer from their hospital into London and had decided to grab a similar meal for the long drive back to their area.

It can be a small world.

OK, I'm bored, so I should be going back to work on Saturday - depending on whether they want me to get an occupational therapy assessment first - it'll be good to get back on the road. If I've learned one thing, it's that I could never work from home - kicking around my place all day just leeches enthusiasm from me. It'll also mean I can write more as I'll have more new material.

So the talk went pretty well (I think so anyway). The audience mainly consisted of a load of journalism lecturers with one or two from the blooging community. So obviously I felt incredibly qualified to be there...

Thankfully I think I entertained them a bit and gave them a few things to think about. After the talk there was a workshop session and a panel discussion which I also think went well.

The very lovely (and all round top bloke) Ian Forrester videoed my talk and has posted it up for everyone to see. I don't think that I was too nervous, especially given that I don't know *anything* about journalism. But I think I need to talk Ian into getting a radio mike so that the audio is a bit better.

So fun, interesting and I hope people got some good out of it.

This post should go live just as I finish my talk on ‘Citizen Journalism’ somewhere in Birmingham.  I’m actually writing this at 5am before getting ready to leave and catch my train.

It’s been a weird thing to write – I had no idea who my audience would be.  Would they be hard-bitten editors of national newspapers?  Would they be bloggers seeking insight into citizen journalism, or would it be a mix of all different people.

So I decided to keep my talk pretty simple, not concerning myself with the nuts and bolts of how ‘us’ and ‘them’ (an what a distiction that is!) would work together.  I even stopped myself from trying to predict the future.

Instead I thought that I’d tell everyone about two ethical concerns that have popped up in the last few weeks, and have a discussion around them.  There is going to be a panel discussion in the afternoon which I’m more looking forward to – hopefully they won’t mistake the simplicity of the presentation with a simplicity of my mind.

If you are interested in the presentation, there is a Powerpoint file for download.  Note that some images may be copyrighted, that the powerpoint goes with the presentation and that I do indeed have cute animals in it.  If there is a video, I’ll try to make it available for download.

I’ll update later with how it went.

(I wonder if they'll notice I never slept last night?)

We have a huge amount of equipment on the back of our ambulances, from the complicated hydraulic trolley, through various splints, oxygen delivery systems, a defibrillator and ventilator to the machine that can measure the carbon dioxide that a patient breathes out.

But it's often the simple bits of kit that are most useful.

We were called as a second crew in order to help them with a 'difficult removal'. It wasn't a good sign when we arrived on scene and had to make our way up four flights of narrow communal stairs to get to the front door of the house. Then we had to negotiate another narrow stairwell to get to the bedroom that the patient, and the other ambulance crew, were.

The patient was one of those 'generally unwell' people - nothing specific and he would need further tests in hospital. The problem was that he was too weak to move - that and his blood pressure was incredibly low. Dangerously so.

The original crew had given him a load of fluid into a vein in an attempt to raise his blood pressure enough to get him out of the house - for some reason this wasn't happening. The crew were concerned that if they sat him up to put him into the usual carrychair the blood would drain out of his brain. This would be a bad thing.

So we put our minds together and decided to use one of the simplest bits of kit on our ambulance. A carry sheet.

A carry sheet is, at it's simplest, a canvas sheet with handles attached. You put the patient on the sheet, all grab a handle and use it like a very soft stretcher. I believe that it is going 'out of favour' because health and safety gurus think that it is bad for our backs. The thing is, out in the real world, you sometimes need to use equipment in an 'unapproved' way in order to get the job done. The need to improvise is just one of the reasons why I love my job.

We dutifully explained to the patient and his wife what we were going to do, then rolled him onto the carry sheet and prepared to carry him out the bedroom, down the stairs, across the walkway, down four flights of stairs and out to the waiting ambulance.

Headfirst.

I would imagine that it didn't feel very safe, four sweating, puffing and groaning ambulance workers carrying you down all those stairs. Narrow stairwells are a complete nightmare when you are moving at three abreast. Then you have to bend the patient around corners. All headfirst in order to keep the blood flowing to his brain by keeping his head lower than his body.

By the time we huffed and puffed him into the ambulance his blood pressure had raised a little.

Fear of being dropped will do that to you.

I'm busy creating a presentation on 'citizen journalism' at the moment for Birmingham on Friday - the problem is that I don't know what my target audience will be, so I'm maybe aiming it a little too low. Stressed. Not good. But at least my knee is much better.

It had been a busy day - running from A to B and back again dealing with some rather unwell patients, so a call to an elderly lady with a cut leg was going to be a nice change of pace.

We'd been told that she had fallen on the bus, but was now at her home. As we pulled up we could see one of the council's buses parked outside, they are used to take the vulnerably elderly to day centres and the like. The pavement was soaked in soapy water.

The driver of the bus met me, he looked a little worried as he showed me to our patient. She was sitting in a chair, her leg was raised and although the bus driver and his mate had used a towel to try and stop the bleeding her leg was still leaking a fair amount. Still it was a fairly simple job - bandage up her leg and run her drive her into hospital where they could properly clean and close the wound.

All throughout my treatment of her, the patient was more concerned with making sure that the bus workers didn't get into any trouble. She was a little bit... 'dotty', which her neighbour assured us was normal for her. She wasn't worried about her leg, nor really about the amount of blood that she had lost (not a huge amount, but it looked like a lot), all she was worried about was the bus crew.

For their part the bus crew had done a lot of good, especially given the fear that a lot of council workers have of being sued when acting outside their 'protocols'. They had made her comfortable, had given her some effective first aid and had cleaned up the pavement and her garden path. They had even brought her shopping in and put the frozen things in the freezer. Given what a lot of other workers would have done, they had acted above and beyond their duties.

And all they were concerned about was that the patient got better.

It's so refreshing to come across some care-workers who actually care, unfortunately it is rarer than I would like.

David Cameron is to announce plans to scrap many of the government's health targets including those on waiting times, the BBC has learned.

Of course not - but one can live in hope...

If we could hold conversations with animals, would we all be vegetarians?

The simple answer would be 'No' - we kill people so why wouldn't we kill animals.

Since recorded history we have invented progressively more lethal ways to kill our neighbours, rather shamefully we have consistently used such equipment upon those members of humanity that are 'of the other'. This killing has gone on for generations despite our ability to communicate with one another. Did the fact that the Nazis and German Jews prevent the Holocaust? Does the shared language in Sri Lanka prevent the killing between the different people? Did the ability to understand one another prevent members of North and South Ireland from killing one another? One final example - the genocide in Darfur.

It is obvious that an ability to communicate does not stop violence.

As humans we have found more and more ridiculous reasons to kill one other, from fighting over resources (oil, gold, water), tribal conflict (Ireland, Sudan) to the craziest argument of who has the biggest God.

This previous criminal history of humanity of a whole lets me believe that, even were animals able to talk to us, we wouldn't stop for one instance in our pursuit of meat to eat. Once you understand that we will kill each other over the shape of the nose, because you own more of a type of mineral or because your God is 'wrong' - is it so wrong to imagine that we would continue to kill in order to live in the fashion to which we are accustomed?

Finally, if we can kill and torture great apes, which have been shown to be able to communicate, for novelty ashtrays and medical experimentation - then what makes you think that we would pay any attention to the cow saying "No!" as it reaches the bolt-gun operator.

This blogpost is an attempt to win a laptop over at Lovetolead - I just need people to go to the site and vote for it. Yes, it would make me very happy to win a laptop. You have all week - Do you need me to beg?