GP pay £110,000 after a 10% rise
Average family doctor pay in the UK rose by 10% to £110,000 in 12 months, according to latest figures.

Is that why nurses and other people working in healthcare, like me, have had a pay-cut (a.k.a. 'below inflation rise')?

I don't begrudge GPs getting paid this (even if they don't have to work shifts like the rest of us). But it will add a bit of bad feeling within the NHS - especially when you see the poor quality of some of the GPs in London.

As I've mentioned before, the government is trying to get ambulance services to take on the role of 'out-of-hours' GP work, I bet we won't be getting paid similar money though.

I just wish that we could have some sort of bargaining power in order to stop the government from crapping all over us.

And in unrelated news - 'Staff shortages and unsafe wards are all the nurses fault, not the government'.

Ever thought of giving up in disgust?

The house was spotless. I'd just managed to climb through the broken window without rupturing myself in order to reach the lady who'd fell over and was unable to get herself up.

Every scrap of furniture was as least forty years old. The wallpaper was ancient, but immaculate. The kitchen had it's original fittings, and even the drinking glasses looked to be years old.

You could open it as an attraction, a 'history house' to show how people used to live in those post-war years.

The two concessions to modernity were a small television and a telephone.

After checking that she hadn't been injured in the fall we sat our patient in a chair - the first thing she did after ten hours on the floor was to reach for a cigarette.

I let her know that we'd wait for her to finish it before driving her off to hospital.

The police, who'd accompanied us to the call in order to help us gain entry, were asking a few questions of the patient. They have their own paperwork to fill in. They were obviously concerned for the lady, they kept asking about carers and community alarms. They asked me if the hospital would help arrange such things.

The police would stand guard over the house until the council sent someone to board up the window that we had broken to gain access. They asked the lady if she had any money in the house.

She named a large figure.

"Better keep that with you", suggested the police officer. I suspect that he didn't want to get the blame if it went missing. I can't fault his logic.

So, along with the patient, we took this sum of money to the hospital. As usual it was packed with patients and seemed a bit low on staff.

I handed over the patient's history and then explained about the money.

It's always amusing to see the nurse in charge's face sink, and then listen to them swear at you.

I remember when I was a nurse that one of the worse things that can happen in the day to day running of the department is for a patient to bring in more than £20. We can kill as many patients as we like, but if money goes missing then nursing careers become a little less...secure.

So we checked and double checked the money before booking it into the safe, three of us counting it out in the psychiatric room, making sure that none of us would run off with it.

Paperwork signed, it was time to look after the patient.

To be concluded...

(One hour of sleep last night - many hours of staring at the ceiling. Now it feels like my right eye is trying to grind itself out of the socket).

If my crewmate were a bit crueller you'd now be looking at a picture of me half hanging out of a window.

It was one of our usual calls, a 'Nan down!', otherwise known as a 'collapse behind locked doors'. Some elderly person has a fall, normally during the night, and is unable to get themselves up. Sometimes they are found by carers, sometimes they hit their community alarm. In this case it had taken her ten hours to manage to crawl to the telephone.

We arrived at the same time as the police. Our patient had already told Control that we would have to break the door down. The police have a ram they can use to smash down a door, so they are tasked to these calls as soon as we know it might be needed.

Looking through the letterbox I could see our patient sitting on the floor in the hallway. She didn't seem hurt at all, and after having a shouted discussion with her, she let if be known that breaking in would be the only way to reach her.

The door was secured with two locks, two bolts and a chain. It wasn't going to be opened with my size twelve boot. The police suggested getting the ram from their station but I had a better idea. Smash the glass window in the door and climb through. It would be a lot less damage and would be easier and cheaper to repair.

Out came 'Vera', my favoured pair of trauma shears and I made short work of the glass. As the window was around five foot off the floor I used our carry-chair as a stool to climb up to it. Then I put my hi-vis jacket down as protection against any small bits of of glass left in the frame and heaved by bulk through the hole.

This worked well and I got all my body through.

Apart from my right leg, which dangled half in and half out. I was stuck.

Two young lads who were watching from the street started laughing. My crewmate forgot to get some mobile phone snaps and I wondered how far apart my legs could go.

Thankfully I managed to free myself while retaining the ability to have children.

I'm a real child sometimes - I love the chance to climb through a window, or over a wall, or hop over a gate.

Luckily our patient wasn't hurt too badly - she had a bump on the head and pain in her knees, so we would be taking her to hospital for further assessment.

To be continued...

I saw this at the BBC news site this weekend.

Many people use the clocks going back to gain an extra hour in bed - but a sleep expert says the change can actually leave people tired.
Even such small changes, said Dr Neil Stanley, can disrupt sleep routines and cause semisomnia - low grade exhaustion caused by inadequate rest.

...and laughed like a drain.

You see, I work rotating shifts which plays sheer bloody havoc with your body clock, leading to an increased risk of getting such illnesses as diabetes, heart disease, bowel cancer, depression and (while not a disease) divorced.

Let me tell you about my sleep pattern over the past few days.

Tuesday night - Four hours sleep.
Wednesday night - Four hours sleep.
Thursday night - Twenty one hours sleep.
Friday night - Forty minutes sleep.
Saturday night - Eleven hours sleep.
Sunday night - Eight hours sleep.

I think someone somewhere said that regular sleep is good for you? This sleep pattern is me on 'day' shifts, when it gets to fitting into night shifts it gets even worse. Then I end up staying awake something like thirty-eight hours.

If I didn't do these rotating shifts then my £400 a week take-home pay would be cut by around 25%.

I love the government.

---

Yesterday was quite a pleasant shift, plenty of things to write about, but I'll start off with the only bad job of the day.

Called by a 'good Samaritan' (on which more later) to a 'male collapsed in the street', we turned up to find a drunk male snoring away in the rain.

We can't leave them there, because we'll only get called back to them and the police won't take him, so we loaded him up onto the ambulance and went.

Let my paperwork speak for itself.

'Patient found asleep in the street, smells heavily of alcohol. Pupils large and sluggish, nystagmus. No obvious physical injury. On waking refused to allow me to take observations. Told me to "Fuck off", which is apparently the only English he speaks. Unable to get details of patient. Acting aggressive.
On arrival at hospital patient attempted to hit me, told me to "fuck off" again and left the ambulance and walked off.'

Sadly, not an unusual job.

Here is an idea - if we pick up a patient drunk from the street, we should take the to hospital (unless someone decides to operate a 'drunk tank'), there they receive their treatment, then the police are informed and the patient is hit with a penalty charge of £100. The proceeds of which then go to the NHS.

Of course what would be better would be to have private companies running 'drunk tanks' where the 'patients' are looked after until they sober up - and then are charged for the privilege.

Barely one day into the Virtual worlds forum and I'm writing about 'Time Until Penis' and 'Dildo In The Room'.

Good job I'm back at work on Saturday.

Normalcy.

No blogging for the next two days as I'm at the Virtual Worlds Forum pretending to be a journalist-blogger (don't ask...) Posts about this will be on Mental Kipple.

On Friday it's Mac Expo day, but I should have written something ambulance based before then. I'm thinking something based on a Levellers song...

VWF is rather interesting even though it is more directed towards business people, it's fun to look at what they consider important in a Virtual World as opposed to us mere consumer/creators.

The low level light in the main hall is massacring my eyes while I'm trying to take notes though.

On the subject of notes - I think that I've taken more notes in the first morning here than I did during my entire time in college.

Which may explain a lot.

Oh, and I've just done a bit for BBC radio's Pods and Blogs, Chris is a very nice chap and persuasive to boot.

Right - time for the afternoon session.

I wish they had beer here...

We pulled up outside the front door of the house and I had the unmistakable feeling of having been here before. I searched my memory, but as the best description of said memory is 'Swiss Cheese', I couldn't remember why I'd been here before.

We'd been called because an eighteen month old child had been having a fit. Normally these are caused by a high temperature, sometimes by epilepsy. The older sister who opened the door seemed uninterested, so we assumed that the fit had finished.

We were led upstairs to the bedroom where the child was lying on the bed, the mother standing over her. The mother didn't seem too distressed, so my crewmate asked what had happened while I examined the child.

Apparently the child suffered from epilepsy and usually had one seizure a month, she was on various medications for this but they didn't seem to work as well as hoped.

My examination of the child showed her to be breathing, and a bit 'knocked out', which is usual. But there was something alerting my 'something's not quite right' sense. To be honest I was sure if the child was still having a seizure.

Some seizures involve the classic flailing around of the limbs, others are much more subtle sometimes showing up only as flickering eyes.

There was something not quite right about this child, her eyes didn't focus on me, she was holding her body in a strange manner and she wasn't trying to pull off the oxygen mask I'd put over her face.

We asked the mother and she told us that the child was normally like this after a seizure.

So we bundled her up and took her to hospital, my crewmate keeping a close eye on the patient while I drove.

As we got to the hospital and I opened the door to the ambulance my crewmate was standing there with a big grin on her face.

The child still looked neurologically unwell, but the next words out of my crewmate's mouth removed all doubt as to why this was so.

"The mother has just told me that the child is blind, has cerebral palsy, developmental delays and is unable to communicate".

It was only after our assessment, our treatment, and halfway to hospital that the mother remembered to tell my crewmate this rather pertinent bit of information.

While the child looked rather ill to us, it was apparent that she had made a full recovery to her normal state of being.

Funny how people can forget to tell us about these apparently small bits of information.

I'm currently doing strange things to my Macbook at the moment (by breaking half a dozen warranties I'm getting to upgrade my hard disk. Hopefully). Consequentially I'm writing this on my Ubuntu laptop.

---

Our patient, lets call her 'Gladys', is ninety-nine years old.

She lives in her own flat, but has a carer come first thing in the morning to make sure that she is alright.

She's blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and normally potters around her house. She should use a walking frame, but often walks around without it.

She's been laying on her floor all night.

She has a community alarm. This is a pendant that is worn around the neck. If the person needs help they press the big red button on it and a call is put through to a care centre - they will then call us.

Her community alarm is on a table.

She'd managed to pull a tablecloth off the table to use as a blanket. Sleeping on the floor she waited until her morning carer arrived.

Community carers aren't allowed to pick people up off the floor - that is a job for the ambulance service, with our backs of steel we are often called to do some heavy lifting.

But we like these jobs, if the patient hasn't hurt themselves we can leave them at home - the patient is always happy to see us and it makes us feel that we have done something useful.

So we check Gladys over, she hasn't hurt herself, she isn't too cold and she wants to stay at home.

We pick her up, tidy up the things that she pulled on the floor when she grabbed the tablecloth. We make her a cup of tea and chat a bit about her family. I tell her off for not wearing her alarm, and remind her that we are more than happy to come around her place should she get into trouble.

I let her know that I'd rather pick her off the floor than yet another drunk.

I'm betting that she won't wear the alarm, there are a lot of people who don't even though it costs £100 a year.

I've known elderly patients who have fallen over at night, then not pressed the button until gone 8am. They 'didn't want to bother us'.

It's a generation that is getting smaller and not being replaced, this self-sufficiency and the desire not to be a burden on others. The feeling that spending the night on the floor isn't an 'emergency'.

I'll miss them when they are all gone.