Ambulance work woes

Not been on here for a while. I told you couldn't keep it up every day. I have a few things to write about so I thought I would come back here.

Its official. The London Ambulance service has spent too much money. So what are they going to do? They are going to cut overtime down to a bear minimum for the next two months. That's your pay packet for Christmas of course. This means that ambulances will not get covered. It will be busier for the crews that are working, runninning on call after call that have delays of an hour or more because there are no ambulances to send.

The performance for the service is good at the moment for this reason they know that they can underperform for a couple of months. They also know that the crews will bugger them up on purpose because overtime has stopped. How much this will effect their annual figures they are not sure. We will see eh!

I also read a bulletin the other day from the LAS stating how we can improve patient care and performance. I am sure it made a few people smirk in disgust as they read it. Leave ambulances empty with no crews for a couple of months that should do it eh!

I was also speaking to a paramedic who works full time on the LAS bank. He qualified through university. He applied for a job n the LAS but failed the interview. But works full time doing bank shifts. So let me get this clear. They are saying he is not good enough to work for the LAS but he can work full time doing shifts for the service on bank. Whats that all about eh! He was also upset when he phoned up for shifts for next week. They told him that they are not giving bank staff any shifts until further notice. He wasnt happy. He has no other income, has a wife and a mortgage . I put him on to someone who does private work, that might help him.

IKEA

We went to ikea yesterday and got a Birtby and a Strind. That's a wall unit and a coffee table to you and me. We had to pick something we could pronounce, some items take about half a day to get your tongue around. Then another half a day to find. For example the Effektiv or the Tryggve, and who would buy a chair called Klappe? I wouldn't. I don't care how good it is .

This is how the store works. You park your car about half a mile away, walk in the entrance via a revolving door with at least 50 or more people who could if they wanted to wait for the next empty section of the revolving door rather than cram in next to you. You are then greeted by stairs, toilets, (which you better use before you go in, because its a long time before you can get out). And a type of ball pond to throw your kids in before your go it alone in the store maze.

Once upstairs ignore the yellow bags ( you can pick one of them up later) pick up a short pencil and an order piece of paper to write down the unpronounceable names (Tip; take pencil home). Then take a free paper ruler to roll up while you are walking around or you could also use it to measure things. People do that. Now you are set.

The key thing is to follow the arrows along the floor. If you deviate off the arrows to look at Klapp chairs for example be prepared to get lost. And don't be surprised if you end up near the revolving door again. After you have spent around 15 hours wandering aimlessly around you come to the restaurant ( smokers don't bother), where you can get fish and skinny chips or some funny looking meatballs in nordic sauce. I think its called Crap in ikea language.

The next obstacle is the Pick up Zone. Grab yourself a flat trolley. Note: if you put anything on it you are guaranteed to bash your shins each time you take a step, so walk slow with small steps to try and avoid this. Another method of pushing it, is to lean over at about 90 degrees with your chest and head parrallel to the arrowed floor. Not so good for the back, but it seems to work ok. You will see hundreds of aisles the size of mountains spread out before you. Now go and find your Effektiv you wrote down with your short pencil.You might find that when you get to the appropiate place where your item should be, the space may be empty and out of bloody stock. ( This happened to us of course). Then you can swear a lot and go home. Please also note, your item may come in 50 or more parts. Grrrrrrr. If you are lucky enough to get what you wrote down, go to the till and stand in line. This will give you time to rub your shins and look for bruises. Or rub your back if you chose the 90 degree option. Now empty your yellow bag and pick up a blue one which they sell at a very reasonable price ( ideal to take home and use as a laundry bag). And if you use a credit card they charge you 70p extra. Bloody cheek!

Here is a tip for cutting Ikea shopping time down fron 15 hours to about 15 mins.
Choose what you want from an Ikea book, you can pick them up near the child and ball pond mix. Do not go in the entrance. Go in the exit. walk the wrong way through the tills and you will arrive at the pick up stock hall. Pick up your item and and turn around and go the right way through the tills again. Sorted! OO i nearly forgot. Drive half way home, turn around and go back and pick up your kids from ball pond, if you left any there that is.

The Good the Bad the Ugly

Thought I would tell you about a couple of jobs that have happened over the last couple of days.

The Good. (good job)
I am sorry to say. It doesn't happen like it does on the TV series Baywatch ( if you remember that) or Casualty ( is that still on TV?) I am talking about peolple who suspend, (Stop breathing and their heart stops.) If you think that a few breaths into the mouth or jumping up and down on their chests cracking the ribs or even given them a belt of a million volts through the chest wall to the heart brings most people back to life after a few minutes, then I am afraid you are very mistaken. It just doesn't work like that.

The reality is that in London around 8% of people survive a VF arrest. (Which is a massive achievement for the LAS.) When I say survive, I mean they walk out of hospital. If you don't know what VF is then you should look it up. And less than 1% survive a complete cardiac arrest, (asystole. You better look that one up too). So to conclude, you would be bloody well lucky if we can get you back from an cardiac arrest.

But in saying that everyone of us could tell you of the few they got back from a cardiac arrest. Which makes the job well worthwhile.

The call I am supposed to be talking about now was an elderly male of around 75 ish in cardiac arrest. The son was performing CPR while waiting for an ambulance. When the crew arrived the paient was in VF, (look it up I said). One shock and back into to a normal rhythm. Just as they arrived at hospital the patient started to talk. As far as we know the patient was taken to the ward and is ok. With a bit of luck he might even walk out of hospital at a later date. Good eh!

The Bad (crap job)
Girl of 20 had her teeth cleaned yesterday. Today her gums started to bleed a bit. Not that gushing type of bleeding. It was that I can hardly see the blood type. She called an ambulance for that and wanted to go to hospital. You don't get seen quicker if you go in by ambulance if you wondered. Bloody some people eh!

The Ugly
My boss!

Parcels in the post office!

I Told you that the Post office was trouble.
Our station officer was called to go to a suspicious parcel incident. We get a lot of these type of calls these days.
The funny thing is, the Parcel was in the Post office. That's where parcels are Kept and distributed I thought. How many bloody parcels do they have there? Thousands a day I thought. What made this one so suspicious eh?

Anyway it turned out to be an Umbrella. Don't no why it was looking so suspicious . Perhaps when wrapped it resembled a surface to air missile. Who knows eh?
And id didn't even rain today or it could have been used. Its been sunny all day.

It fell over

Our 12ft Sunflower fell over in the wind. Grr. We still have a few left. Or did it fall ? Mmmmm. I bet it was lynns dad, who snuck over and cut through its root system with a spade or sharp impliment to weaken the root ball. It must have been him as he is growing his own, which are are bit smaller than ours. Jealous i think.The bugger Eh !

Below. Sunfower pic before sabotage

Friday night. Old persons missing

Its a Friday and Saturday night thing. I just wonder where all the older people go on these evenings. They seem to stop calling ambulances on these nights when the call type changes to drunks and assaults. Where do they all go? Why do they stop calling us? Are they all drunk too? Are they all out boogieing the night away with the local pi** heads, scrots and thugs. They must still get ill. But they never seem to call much when the pi** heads are out and about. Funny that .

Where is your belly. where is my chest?

On ambulance car today. I am Working today. Until 7 o'clock. GRR. My first job was an elderly man, given as Chest pains. In Fact he had got abdo pains. That is a common,patients not knowing the difference between their abdo and their chest. Now let me give you an idea where each of them are.. Just Bellow your head and neck is your chest. And the bit where your belly button is ,that's your abdo. Easy Eh! So why do so many people get it wrong? And I had to wait 40 minutes for one of our ambulances to arrive . I do sometimes get tea while I am waiting for ambulances. But not this time. I didn't want one anyway.

New reliefs.
There are a few newbies that have just started . I shouldn't moan too much about working this weekend. They have to work 7 weekends out of ten for 18 months. It that fair ? I think not. The firm have got them in the palm of there hands. The option when you go for the interview is, if you don't agree to doing it then you wont get the job.. I still think its wrong to do that to them. I know I am right. There must be an EU directive knocking about somewhere that says its bloody wrong too.