Well, extended licensing laws are in, which I’m afraid will mean more disorder on the streets, couple that with the seasonal increase in illness, and the ice on the roads that means I can’t drive as fast as I normally can and what you get is an increasing failure to reach our government’s benchmark time.

Remember the Great and Powerful God ORCON?  Where we have to reach most high priority calls within 8 minutes?

We aren’t on target for it this year, and unlike other years I don’t think that “extra effort”, as our management call it, will save us.  There is a shortage of ‘flu vaccinations, so more at risk people will get ill, we’ll be going to more alcohol fueled violence because of the new licensing laws.  It is thought that there will be a colder than average winter, so, because of ice, our vehicles won’t be able to drive as quickly and as safely as normal.  And Agenda for Change has hit morale hard especially given the uncertainty of payment for overtime shifts (which are needed to cover staff shortfalls).  Oh and more people are calling us for more crap reasons every day.

We are doomed.

But worry not, patients won’t be doomed, remember, this eight minute ORCON time has absolutely no basis in health, or prevention of death.  If your heart stops then you have, at best, five minutes to get it going again, after eight minutes, I’m afraid you are more than likely dead, and are going to stay that way.  Most calls clinically either need a “faster than five minutes”, “faster than half an hour” or “Sometime in the next couple of hours” response.  Eight minutes is some figure plucked out the air.

So don’t worry, all it means is that the best Chief Executive the LAS has ever had will lose his job, and we won’t get given as much money to fund the service.  After all you wouldn’t want to fund a failing service would you?

Stupid $&%*£^&*!!! government.

All I can do?  Get there as quickly and safely as possible, and make sure the patient doesn’t get any worse.  I can only do what I can do…

From Warren Ellis – ‘ So how dead does this place get on a Sunday night?’

Well today (looks at his watch) yesterday was pretty much dead person day.

Two corpses, two nearly dead, and one about to die.

All in one shift.

I think my favourite was an elderly gentleman in a nursing home, who had real trouble with his breathing.  I asked the nurses there to sit him forward, so I could listen to his chest with my stethescope, and they replied, “How?”, and, “I don’t understand”.

I think I got a bit ‘shouty’ with them after that.

I’ll gloss over the way they opened the door for me, but then let me find the patient all on my own…

Posting will possibly be a bit light over the next few days, as Jeannie is coming over to stay from Seattle, so most of my time will be spent showing her around London.  I’m looking forward to it.

Then there will be drinks, feel free to turn up and say hello to a genuine American.

Looks like it might be fairly minor – current theory is that a bomb has failed to go off on a tube. So far it's not being declared as a major incident.
At the moment we are all on station sitting watching the news.

Here is hoping that no-one is hurt.

I suspect I can direct you to your normal news-sites, as I'm not going to have any great insights from here on in.