Two words Tom CHEMICAL RESTRAINT I wouldn't have put up with that at all. Come and work in NZ where your allowed to defend yourself. Even though it's only 10 quid an hour here the standard of living is much better. Come and check it out for your holiday. I even think the we have an exchange scheme with LAS. Let me know .... From my point of view the chemical restraint is well justified. I don't think any of my peers would argue any differently. The restraint is for their safety and yours. The autonomy we have with the procedures in our service, works really well. Your allowed to make a decision. Yes there are issues with this form of restraint but we do it under the crimes act. If we were stuck with mental health legal rubbish then it would never happen and then people including ambulance staff would get hurt. A bonus, we use Midazolam so the patient usually forgets what happened at the time. One wouldn't like to physically restrain a patient for to long (Hopefully you don't lose it at the time) and have a case of restraint aphyxia. A bit hard to explain that you know. It's all how you do it and the decisions you make Dont get me wrong I prefer not to use chemical restraint if I can help it, and will always try and talk the patient down first. But the line has to be somewhere, both for us and for the interests of the patient. A few months ago a suicidal patient tried to get out of my moving (quickly) ambulance. To do this he aggressively tried to go through my partner to get out the back door. She politely gave him a precordial thump with her boot. It worked really well. Like you never a police officer around when you want one. Well take care Tom. Get well soon. And remember there are actually good people out there that need our help.