Random Acts of Reality

The first job of the day was to 'female slipped on ice - police on scene'.

I'll admit that, at half past six in the morning my thoughts towards people, actually towards anything, are often less than charitable.

'It's not that cold', I said to my crewmate - although years of working in all weathers mean that I'm perhaps not best placed to judge, 'I bet she's found the one tiny patch of ice in Newham and fell on that'.

It's the end of the financial year, and so there are roadworks and temporary traffic lights everywhere, unbeknownst to us there was also a 'fun run' in the area - no-one had told us road staff about it. So it took a fair bit longer than normal to get to the patient.

She was stretched out on the pavement and there were four police officers standing around her. As she was partway in the road they had parked their vehicle to 'fend off' the oncoming traffic.

As we pulled up one of the police officers knocked on our window, 'be careful - it's like an icerink out here'.

Well, I have nice boots, they tend to be alright on ice, so I suspected the police officer was being a bit dramatic.

I stepped out of the vehicle and instantly felt my feet sliding under me. The officer was right - it was treacherous.

I decided to forgive our patient for falling over.

My crewmate started to assess the patient - she had a painful knee and with one gentle feel from my crewmate through the patient's jeans she knew she'd done something serious and crunchy to her knee.

Time for a stretcher then.

So, being the driver, I pulled the stretcher out and started towards the patient.

My crewmate describes the next few moments as her seeing the stretcher flying towards her, and her putting herself between the careening stretcher and the patient.

From my point of view, while moving the heavy and awkward stretcher both of my feet slipped and took off skywards. The horizon disappeared and I found myself admiring the beautiful blue sky. Then there was a crunch as I hit the floor and skidded a few inches to a halt.

I knew I hadn't hurt myself so I found myself laying there laughing.

The police officers ran over to me to make sure I was alright - I'm heavy after all and I have a lot of things in my pocket that made an awful noise as I fell on my arse.

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The rest of the job went quite smoothly, our patient was very brave despite being in a lot of pain - pain that we controlled the best we could with immobilisation of the knee and some nitrous-oxide. Further examination in the ambulance revealed something rather wrong with our patient's knee, so she needed a trip to the hospital.

My crewmate's insta-diagnosis was proven right as our patient's kneecap - normally one bone had decided to become at least six separate bones...

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As for the road, the police had got in contact with the council to come and grit this small section of road. What had happened was that the was a large puddle in a bus lane, as the night buses had gone past they had each laid a thin layer of water onto the road, these layers had then frozen, aided perhaps by the nearby river. This wasn't helped by being essentially invisible against the black of the road.

Unforeseeable and unfortunate, it was no-one's fault and it'll teach me to think ill thoughts at the crack of sparrow's fart in the morning.

Possibly.

I really like I.T - Information Technology, after all I've been using it since I was around eight years old. However, in those thirty years of using computers I'm also fully aware of some of the problems that I.T can make manifest.

Especially when you bring in the cheapest contractors, don't supervise them properly, don't consult properly with the people to be using the system and then start cutting budgets halfway through the project.

*cough* NHS *cough*

I mean, if you can't get contractors who are skilled enough to stick linoleum to the floor, how can you trust your commissioning people to find someone good enough to do invisible and arcane things with computers.

Therefore you end up doing daft things like sending letters with confidential information to the wrong people - as, despite what the 'Connecting for Health' person says, without serious thinking I can imagine two ways of a member of the public getting confidential and potentially damaging information because of these letters.

(And notice how the CoH speaks as faceless unit - the spokesperson doesn't have a name in that article)

Actually this is perhaps why we stick with outdated software - official web browser of the NHS? Internet Explorer 6.

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But I'm no Luddite - when a system works well, it works well.

Take my mum - she's currently under the care of a consultant and the consultant is juggling her medication for her. Slowly increasing the medication while looking for improvement or side effects.

Does my mum need an appointment to do this? No. The Consultant has an email address that we can send updates to, and the Consultant can suggest dose changes.

It works really well.

The problem only occurred when my mum went to the GP surgery (that has been there for some years) in order to get a refill of the prescription.

My phone rang that morning...

'Hello, it's the GP surgery, you mum has come in asking for more pills but we have no record of this - but she has told us about the emails from the consultant - can you fax the email to us please'.

Well, I haven't owned a fax machine for quite some time.

'Could I not forward the email to you? I have it on the machine I'm sitting in front of right now'.

'Sorry, no - our email isn't working yet'.

So I had to print it out and drive down to my mum's place (only five minutes and I did get a cup of tea for my trouble) with a printed out email in my hand. All because their email wasn't working yet.

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So, you can see how it works - someone embracing technology as an option (I know that email isn't hugely secure, but the important thing is that we had a choice about whether to use it or not), while another part of the NHS can't get it's email working.

Situation normal then - the luck of the draw.

As I am a complete nerd, I have email alerts set up for various topics spoken about in government. Often I don't have the chance to read them but, being stuck alone on station last night, I had the time and the good luck to read on such discussion.

This was a discussion about encouraging people to 'self care' their minor ailments. There was no mention of ambulances, the discussion centred mostly on the role that Pharmacists, GPs and Practice Nurses have to play. After all the government has no idea what us ambulance people do - I'm sure they think we only go to car crashes, heart attacks and the sort of thing you see on 'Casualty'*.

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Never mind, although I do have one comment to make on the discussion.

'It is worth listing the minor ailments that I mean. They are generally part of everyday life and include backaches, coughs and colds, headaches, toothache, indigestion, skin problems, allergies and some respiratory problems.'

Hold on! I've been to every single one of those minor complaints, normally as a 'Cat A', high speed response. Around 80% of calls to us via 999 are for these very things.

The discussion continues,

'In many cases people manage these minor ailments already through self-care using an over-the-counter, or OTC, product, but research conducted by the Proprietary Association of Great Britain indicates there is often a significant level of dependency on the doctor.'

By doctor they also mean 'Call 999 because they don't want to wait for a GP appointment, then moan when they reach A&E and have to wait for longer than five minutes'.

'But it's serious' they look up at me and whine when the nurse, quite rightly, puts the poor helpless little flower out in the waiting room while trying to deal with the people in majors who are genuinely sick.

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Needless to say, reading this gave me a good laugh...

You can read the whole thing here.

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*'Trauma' is being shown on British TV at the moment and the first episode was last night - I'm yet to watch it, but from the reaction of my American colleagues it should be entertainingly awful...