There are pros and cons of working on the car.  One of the pros is that you can hand over your patient to the ambulance crew and leave them to it – very handy if they are annoying, smelly or whatever.

However, one of the cons is the reverse of this . . . as in you can be left stranded with a patient for quite a long time (hours in some cases) with no one to help but the kit and wit you bring.  And if you do manage to keep them alive the conversation soon dries up . . . or in this case, becomes ridiculous! Continue reading →

I thoroughly believe that its healthy to have a bit of a bitch and a moan once in a while – especially in your workplace.  So long as your work is not effected you should be able to off-load your stresses however you see fit.  In our job, most of the this ‘off-loading’ happens in the mess room and has been long accepted.  But, with ambulance crews spending more and more time away from station this is becoming less and less of an occurrence.

So, we do our bitching and moaning on the road.  There’s a theory somewhere that a unit or body of people will always end up uniting against a common cause.  In the workplace this inevitably ends up being ‘The Boss’.  Its not their fault – and most of time they’re innocent of all witch hunt charges placed against them by the mob.  But, in order for a unit or body of people to work effectively, they need a common cause to fight against.  So, ‘The Boss’ it is . . . I consider it a necessary metaphorical sacrifice.

A student paramenace friend of mine, Mick*, told me of a funny dispatch/Control scenario the other day . . .  Continue reading →

I’m very conscious about living in the same area that I work and am aware that it would be only a matter of time until I bumped into patient that I would have previously dealt with whilst on a day off.

But I somehow forget that there’s more chance of this happening whilst I’m still in uniform.

Working on the car two days ago I’d stopped by a Tescos store to pick up a healthy dinner.  Half way down an aisle and with a basket full of Jaffa Cake packets I heard a woman’s voice behind me.

“Hello?  Hello?  Remember me?”  The accent was Turkish . . . I think. Continue reading →