Diary of a Transport Attendent

Dick Swinging

2012-01-08T21:28:00.001Z

When parousing facebook groups surrounding ambulance services (voluntary and paid) I was reading
SJA Facebook Group.

Why must during any discussion a post be preceeded by how big a cock the person has (or is?). For example

"As a duty manager, ETA, Blue Light driver and Ambulance trainer (not to mention 18 years experience of doing motorsports cover)..."

Would these people speak in this way in person? Is it the same as those people who insist on emails ending their name in a list of post nominals like a list of sexual conquests?

Can people not express an opinion in a manner convincing unless they state all the things they have done? Does a pecking order exist like an exciting game of Top Trumps?

It gets even better when there is a disagreement and the titles list get longer and longer. People begin arguing about who has the most "experience" and start to bring other parts of their life (using the term loosely here) such as

"Im a qualified chemist and work as a materials scientist :P"

Seriously who gives a fuck? How is this organisation supposed to be respected when the members think the correct way to gain respect is to have a pissing contest on a public forum?

Paramedic Refuses to Carry Dying Girl

2011-12-08T23:14:00.001Z

As if on cue
After saying there was not much worth posting about in last few months the Daily Mail has come to the rescue in Chronic Hypertension causing fuckwittery. (I have just been advised that reading articles printed by the daily mail is in fact one of the most common causes of chronic hypertension)

Paramedic Ms Lynn denied she had put her patient's health beneath her own

So what if she fucking had? Why in fucks name should we put patients before ourselves? Christ the public already are all for raping pensions, think we get paid too much and are sat around like water fairys picking our arse cracks. What in gods name would make me want to risk myself for any patient? Will we get any thanks for it? I'm pretty sure they won't bother paying our pension if we are incapcitated and I doubt the general public will be supportive of sick pay or a redundancy package.
Daryl Proctor, a first-aider

I think I can say this for all of us - we all looked at each other as if to say ‘f**k health and safety’

Well clearly. You had a fucking hour and you hadn't bothered to move the young girl out of a freezing cold fucking muddy shitty hole. You had also been too fucking THICK to go and open the bastard gate because "you presume the ambulance crew would use their magical father christmas type key" (Slight paraphrasing) and not one of you were concerned enough about the poor child to go and meet the ambulance and help them find the girl because you are a bunch of bone idle cunts.

The comment that came out was "this is a low priority call" or "a green call". That was the male paramedic.'

So basically you don't know what the paramedic said, those two are nowhere near the same words. You have no fucking clue what was said and you are making it up (with the help of the Daily Mail inserting quote marks) to pass it off as fact.
Also its FUCKING AMPDS. Almost certainly the reason this was low priority is you gave shit information (well let's be honest you didn't think to open the fucking gate to the field did you, you daft bastard?)
But anyway now we have critqued the IQ berefit reporter lets look at the average Daily Mail racist cunt reader to see their opinions they have chosen to share in between claiming dole and watching Jeremy Kyle.

What in the name of God has my country become..............?
- Mitch, Stalag Southampton, Land Of Doom

Fuck knows, My Atlas doesn't indicate where "Land of Doom" is located. Instead this article is about the UK so not sure why you feel the state of "your" (are you the dictator or something?) country is relevant. However if it is "your" country as you claim perhaps you should spend more time sorting it and less time posting on Daily Mail site, hmmmmmm?

Absolutely disgusting, what the hell sort of people are doing these jobs, this awful woman should be truly ashamed of herself 'frightened they fell over' what the

Who said she was frightened of falling over? Are you incapable of reading? I suspect probably. I am impressed you managed to type that response. I am considering submitting this as evidence for the Infinite Monkey Theorem. I also wasn't aware that you could bash your head against a keyboard and get a somewhat intelligable composition of thought.

not surprised were i work there are plenty of people that make more effort looking for excuses to do noting than just getting on with jobs they are just lazy it makes me sick

I can't help but notice the girl died in hospital. Now I am no expert on LAS however I am pretty sure they do not have a fucking teleporter so I would suggest they in fact did get the girl safely onto the ambulance. Unless of course your point is that ambulance crews are not only lazy but thick in not being able to find excuses to do nothing. Or are you implying that where you work people are even more lazy than ambulance staff? To be fair that is probably true given the workload of LAS on any given day. I can only hope your sickness is the start of ebola. Or maybe something slower like the onset of AIDS.

The LAS attendents are in the wrong profession; health and safety gone mad. In that situation I wouldnt follow backcare guidance.. I'd rather be in trouble for trying to help than not..

This is exactly why LAS don't want you. Just what they need is someone scrounging off public sector sick pay because they were too thick to consider carefully how to move the young girl. I would think you are exactly the kind of IQ negative morons that would have dropped the fucking girl on her head (not great for seizures - medical fact). Even better there is no evidence of the paramedic being worried about her back. Just the H&S of everyone. I expect you are exactly the kind of sponging cunt that would have sued LAS had you have hurt your back helping. In fact why the fuck didn't you help?

This brings me to the main point, all these people were suggesting that the ambulance crew should have used their superhuman powers and magical keys (we have a lot of responsiblity for band 5) to move this girl yet the slack jawed yokels spent one hour looking at her on the floor. A WHOLE FUCKING HOUR?! Why are people not up in arms about the ridiculously inept safety planning from organiser or the lack of brain cells to rub together between all of the fucking witnesses.
I'd be asking how any human being could spend an hour looking at an injured girl on the floor and just grumble the ambulance crew have not turned up.
To add cream to the whole thing

'I believe that I walked away at that point. I really was very close to being either verbally or physically abusive to the LAS attendant.

What a great example to set from a fucking history teacher. In front of children lets assault emergency services. You have done fuck all but watch a girl waste away for an hour, you failed to get an ambulance even though she suffered from a "violent" fit (just what in gods name were you expecting batman the wonder aider to do?) and then think you have the GOD GIVEN RIGHT to fucking assault my colleagues?!
You are complete scum. You are a complete waste of nutrients, oxygen and sunlight. I hope you are put on the fucking child abuse register. I hope nobody with your lack of compassion or criminal motivations are never allowed near children again.
In summary a plague of locusts causing genital necrosis is not a good enough punishment for this bunch of frontal lobe damaged idiots. You can point blame around all you want but first aid is the difference between a life lost and a life saved. You wasted that hour being self righteous lazy cunts and caused the death of a 14 year old girl. You have no excuse, there was no training needed to realise that leaving that girl in the mud for an hour and not even trying to help emergency services find her would contribute to her death.
How you can even managed not to drown yourselves in your own tears I do not know, I can only hope you choke slowly on your vomit while you sleep.

Been busy and not a lot changing

2011-12-08T19:56:00.001Z

Unfortunately I have been rather busy of late what with training and everything, I would have posted about the strikes but was so fed up of the new coverage I just didn't bother.Idiots Strike AgainIt seems to be a constant thorn in my paw that people whinge about having to wait for an ambulance because "the ambulance station is two minutes away". Unfortunately the general public seems not to realise we are not water fairys and are not sat scratching waiting for you to ring us because you have "forgotten what day it is".This article amuses me even more, there is an RRV but if it goes on a call then it isn't available for other calls. What in fucks name do they expect? Would they like to ring an ambulance and have the reply "well yes we have a car just around the corner but if we send it you there will be nothing left if another call comes in"Was also surprised to learn recently a relative of a friend was gobsmacked to learn that student paramedics do placements in hospitals in operating theatres and emergency departments (amongst others). Does everybody think that the ambulance service are strecher monkeys?Are the public so thick that they have this image of ambulances sat on station 24 hours a day waiting for that one and only call to come in to rush round immediately producing another ambulance from thin air and that we will then engage the afterburners to arrive at hospital in 1 minute flat?If they are this thick (and I expect they are given the UK population voted Tory last time) then is it any wonder without education that they do not support ambulance staff striking?

Press gets you down

2011-08-15T16:27:00.003+01:00

Feel utterly miserable today rather than my normal grumpy self. Just come off nights and got slaughtered each and every night almost none stop for the good people of the county I serve.

Then whilst reading throught some articles on Uk Ambulance Forum (Highly Recommended) I find some more on the current problem with Scottish Ambulance Service meal break policy.

Why is it then I have to read pages of people referring to ambulance workers as lazy, sitting around on standby all shift and valuing a cup of tea over a human life.

It is trully soul destroying to feel so hated by the general public for trying to do a job that in all honesty is not brilliantly paid for the responsiblity. It seems that we as a profession are lazier than the fire brigade because they always come out (For future reference fire vehicles average less than 1 job a shift) and more heartless than Doctors because they work long hours too (Anyone who has ever tried to get an OOH GP out will know the reason they work long hours is they spend most of it referring patients directly to ambulances for being too far away from them - True Story).

92% of ambulance staff are lazy, cowardly,unprofessional moneygrabbers lead by intellectually peasant trade unions

Is this the true public opinion?

Ambulance staff do not get paid for breaks (unlike their fire and police service colleagues) they are not classed as an Emergency Service (again unlike fire and police who enjoy better pay and pensions) and endure a gruelling job where they have to act as a social worker, psychiatrist, midwife, first aider, counsellor, confident and a number of other roles to do the best they can for all the people in the communities they serve.

Regardless of rubbish about sitting around all day I can persoanlly assure you that ambulance staff get slogged. I have personally done 14 hours straight without stopping for one break (in a service that has distrubable meal breaks).

I just can't get my head around spending an entire night with sometimes the complete dregs of society getting covered in more bodily fluids than rolling around in a public toilet along with my colleagues with a smile and pleasant attitude for every patient we see that we continue to get slated in the press week upon week for being lazy.

I received another thank you letter from a person I cared for in one of most remote parts of my patch which is one of the best feeligns (thank you letters are horrifically few and far between) and that has already been crushed.

Just the latest link to more ambulance staff hating people

Even the fire brigade are getting in on the action, suggesting that incorporating us into the fire service would fix the problem (whole different post as it's one of the single stupidest suggestions ever made. You would think with all that time sitting in their beds on station or eating toast they could come up with something more robust).

How could anyone be attracted to a career in this part of the NHS? Reduced to nothing more than trained chimps who are expected to have no breaks, work countless hours non stop and still endure the constant criticism of the general public. I suspect there are more comments about how awful we are as human beings than the entire combined IQ of the people posting them.

It's going to be hard to drag myself back into work for next set of shifts after reading that lot.

Riots in London

2011-08-09T10:39:00.002+01:00

Trully sad times at moment for London. Groups of people with combined IQ's less than your average Jack Russel trashing the place. I don't see how you can justify looting ever, you may be disillusioned with some sort of policy but how does stealing from and destroying an innocent third parties belongings help with that?

Whilst I understand people want to help I'm not sure the people that should be sent in are ones that come out with

voulenteer or not,, i would help!! sod the danger part,, i respect the fact that i have a duty of care and if they call on sja then my hand will be up.

Now aside from the fact that duty of care doesn't mean you don your cape and rush in to every situation I have real concerns with this. Do you really want people running around in a riot with a few bandages going into any situation regardless of danger? This is how you start doubling the amount of people injured.

I'm not sure who is more idiotic, the people rioting or the "superheroes" who think they are going to swoop in and save the day.

Abuse whilst working

2011-08-06T16:19:00.003+01:00

Now most emergency services are no stranger to verbal abuse. Myself included. However the frustration it causes when people are actively trying to stop you performing your role cannot be described with mere descriptions of the untold horror you wish to exact on said idiot.

Recently my particular favourite was "you can't take my relative to hospital because I have power of attorney"

Now, I wasn't trying to sell him life insurance, change his electricity provider or mow his lawn. I was trying to ensure that after suffering a significant injury that meant he could no longer tell me who he was, where he was, when he was or what had happened that he would get appropriate healthcare to ensure he was safe.

This apparently made me a "jobsworth"

Well yes you window licking arse biscuit my job is worth something to me as are the patients I attend and I'm not about to discharge a potentially seriously injured person just because you cannot be arsed to visit him in the hospital. Also I am not a representative of the "fucking state" I am someone trying to do the best I can for people so get fucked.

The sooner I am allowed to crack anyone with a cylinder that gets in my way when I am working the better.

Its deeply saddening to think that as people get older the people they raised and looked after are more concerned with the cost of driving a car to the nearest hospital to visit their beloved relative than the welfare of said relative.

Peoples lifespans might be getting longer but not without hollow headed idiots shaking their heads so hard they sound like a maracca trying to stop it happening.

Facebook enabled stupidity

2011-07-08T22:46:00.003+01:00

Facebook, a wonderful creation where people can share ideas and other such shite. However it is also full of fucktards who haven't got two cells in their cranial cavity to rub together.

For example St John Ambulance have a facebook group where somebody is trying to insist that SJA is not an ambulance provider and CQC insisted they register because they are a first aid provider.

Now despite them being forwarded to CQC's own website to the page that says "if you are an organisation soley for provision of first aid you do not have to register" and also to the bit that shows that all st john countys are registered as private ambulance providers he instead insists he doesnt need to look.

Like all internet based activities once the intellectual leper is defeated it turns into personal attacks and presumably he went to get his mum to give him milk and cookies.

How is St John Ambulance supposed to present itself as a modern healthcare organisation when chicken molesting individuals such as this are allowed to

1) Express an opinion
2) Put that opinion on the internet
3) Enable other people to read that opinion

Free speech is fine as long as your IQ > 1. If an Egg Plant could beat you in a game of chess you are not allowed to subject me to your inane ramblings and pseudointellectual shite.

It's just a totally new way of Trolling however I can see a photo now of the person I would like to introduce to a naked Margaret Thatcher. Unfortunately Facebook doesn't have a "Punch in the face button" or as I would prefer a "Drop into pool of Sharks with frickin laser beams on their heads"

Tories want new minimum age for politicians

2011-04-12T17:24:00.004+01:00

Latest Moron in Politics

Now let's not beat about the bush, David Cameron is quite clearly a cunt. A dirty sweaty cunt with enough yeast to rival your average supermarket. A cunt so devoid of attention that small animals get trapped in the pubic hair and choke to death on the fumes coming out of the jaws of death. A cunt that you would half expect to find rotten teeth in and the only thing ever likely to go into it is two arthritis riddled fingers from its dirty sweaty owner.

But I digress.

What this woman believes is that the reason he is incapable of running the country is because he is not over 45. Now I am pretty sure on your fourty fifth birthday you are not suddenly endowed with the knowledge of the world. In fact I am pretty sure the only knowledge this transvestite looking egg plant has due to her age is what a menopause feels like when you are sat at home alone again on a Friday night.

So far this politician is known for trying to encourage doctors to call overweight people "fat" in the hope that this will make them take responsiblity for their actions and to remove free milk for under fives. Other things that being over 45 has allowed her to "sort of know stuff" was that the NHS staff she abandoned should accept increment freezes or that it wasn't an important step to make sexual health teaching compulsory in schools as this "does not guarantee quality".

Quite what she knows remains unclear. I can only assume she wants people to wait until they are over 45 to enter poltics because quite frankly dinosaurs like this idiot need voting out as soon as possible. God forbid new fresh thinking ideas and people that actually are in touch with the electorate exercise their democratic right to stand for parliament.

Clearly being 44 means you just don't know enough

Parents = Fucking Idiots

2011-02-16T21:38:00.002Z

Is there no limit to the number of idiot parents

Seriously how fucking thick are you? "Wagh we had to blue light to the hospital, you'd be risking thousands of babies lives"

Well thats odd given that

BBC News

Clearly states that in all 11 units they do 3,600 operations a year. Now unless baby heart surgery is about to suddenly spike (maybe they all heartbroken about how shit a chance they have with the genetic pool they got to pick from) I don't see how closing less than half of the units instantly equates to more babies dieing than would be transported in an entire year across the whole UK?

How do people not get that the evidence is there that having specialist units with all the specialist doctors means that their children get better care? This is the same shit munching fucktards that want everyone innoculating.

The reason the NHS is failing is the pack of thrush ridden vaginas that take up valuble time on the BBC whinging and trying to campaign about perfectly sensible efficiency savings.

I am fucking sick this week of people who would probably fail a brain scan. Its the same argument as the people that complain that an ambulance station is built somewhere in the vicinity of where they live and also complain that they aren't getting emergency vehicles quick enough.

If you have enough time to complain then you have enough time to do some voluntary work or alternatively just shut the fuck up. The amount of BBC money that could be saved by hiring me to be a moron editor. Everytime somebody expresses an opinnion that the average chimpanzee can see is fucking idiotic I will shoot them in the face. Furthermore I would then broadcast this on TV. X Factor style you could vote on what type of bullets I would use and when I would do it.

Finally be something fucking entertaining on TV and a few less society leeches bringing the average intelligence of the british citizen down by their parents not having the good sense to grin and bear a coathanger.

Lose Weight Fatty!

2011-02-03T17:39:00.002Z

BBC Article

"I had to walk to the ambulance" boo hoo cry me a river. "I had to hoist MYSELF onto the ambulance" how dare those ambulance people not break their spines lifting my 34 stone mass. HOW DARE they expect me to move myself.

Because you fucking could you fat twat. If you could walk down the slope and could get yourself on the trolley why the fuck should somebody do themselves in carrying you?

Frankly walking to the ambulance might do you some fucking good. You manage to get to the fridge so you can get to the fucking ambulance.

There would have been a pissing seat belt just it wont have been designed to secure a blue whale.

You must be a strong patient to have the gall to be on BBC News complaining that your local ambulance service isn't paying the ridiculous amount of money required to airlift you by Chinook or whatever pristine service you think you DESERVE to get you to hospital. The fact you needed TWO fold down seats suggests a lot.

There are a lot of people in this case doing their best to get you to hospital but when you weight nearly three times the average what do you expect them to do? Why should they injure themselves mauling you around because you think you shouldn't have to move yourself. It is not a fucking chauffeur service and you shouldn't expect to be carried anywhere just because you are stressed out about going into hospital.

Start acting like a stronger person for fucks sake rather than moaning.

Can doctors snap into action in an emergency?

2011-01-22T12:36:00.003Z

BBC Article

Overwhelmingly - No they cannot

1) Yet doctors and nurses are constantly being asked to respond in emergency situations because they are, in theory, best qualified to help.

My response: As compared to a paramedic? A nurse is best qualified in the pre hospital arena to care for somebody over a paramedic?!

2) With no access to fluids for another 40 minutes, the doctors had to concentrate on opening airways, controlling bleeding and treating the walking wounded.

My response: How did he managed without fluids?! HOW IN THE LOVE OF GOD?! Can you believe he had to concentrate on airway issues FIRST?! Fucking moron.

3) Dr Holden and his colleagues couldn't save everyone they treated in Tavistock Square on 7/7, but the GPs "instinctively understood they had to do the most for the most," he says.

My response: Thank god they thought of that. If only that was in some part of training somewhere for ambulance staff. It could be really useful.

4) As vice chairman of BASICS, British Association for Immediate Care, Dr Holden says that most doctors are not trained to deal with emergency medical events.

My response: No tahts what paramedics are trained for

5) "Doctors can often be very nervous of performing their skills in front of an audience," he says.

My response: Then perhaps they shouldn't be doctors? That is a day in day out requirement of a paramedic

6) He also knows what it is like to attend major incident scenes with the ambulance service.

My response: Getting in the way?

7) "In an emergency you want someone who knows their job, who can work from first principles."

My response: Exactly fuck off and leave it to paramedics.

How in fucks name does this entire article at no point discuss paramedics. How in the love of christ do you talk about pre hospital care and whats best without discussing paramedics.

Fucking Parents

2011-01-13T12:30:00.002Z

BBC News Article

I would like to say I'm sorry for the inevitable backlash that this post is going to cause, but I'm not.

This is same old bollocks from parents who think the "I've got a child therefore I am right" argument means that they can spout off any old crap they feel like. Because ONE child died without complications of swine flu this of course means that a good use of NHS money is to vaccinate all under fives because POSSIBLY that ONE child might have survived.

Now aside from the issue that this child could have been vaccinated last year for swine flu for free why do people have such an unbalanced view of the NHS?

OF COURSE the NHS has to make decisions based on risk and benefit. It has a limited budget and the regulatory authorities have a moral obligation to try and do the most for the most with the money they have available.

Now I in no way detract from the pain suffered by that family but unfortunately somebody somewhere has made the difficult decision that the money needed to immunise three million people could be better spent than preventing on death.

Read the comments on that page - some fucking moron is asking why over 65's should be getting the vaccine before children. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Clearly this person has no idea the way illness effects the elderly YES REGARDLESS OF HOW ACTIVE THEY ARE it takes them longer to recover, much longer.

Furthermore it is not a fallacy Mr Biomedical degree cunt to say that you can save more lives investing the money somewhere else. What you have in fact done is say that because of current investment fifty people died in London bombings therefore it needs less funding.

No you fucking twat what it means is that it would cost a set amount to reduce that to 49 that might be better spent elsewhere. It in no way indicates what would happen if you removed defence funding. For someone with a degree and pissing around in cancer research for fifteen years (Seriously how much funding and you still haven't cured it?) you would think you would understand your extrapolation is worthy of a retard with a head injury.

I am sick to death of parents losing all sense of perspective in the world and arguing that a child's life is worth hundreds of adults. Unfortunately children die. Even if all the money in the NHS was diverted to paediatric care children would still die. Parents will never be happy with that but it is regrettably part of life.

I do feel for families and my own experiences with children dieing have been horrific but that doesn't mean that people are neccesarily to blame just because billions of pounds were not spent on that one life.

I personally think most people would be unhappy at what in the NHS would have to be given up to vaccinate three million children needlessly if they were honest. No doubt more would die then and there would be an equally sensationalist news article about the waste of NHS money. It would be even more absurd if a child died through a reaction to the vaccination...

To the fucking brain dead egg plant that think everyone up to the age of 18 needs vaccinating despite experienced specialist medical advice: This is why you are still on benefits you turd eating, scrotum tickling, frontal lobe damaged arse.

Public Relations

2010-12-20T16:13:00.002Z

Noticed today an article on BBC news

Click Here to see it

This is obviously a great idea. Awareness of first aid in the general public saves lives. Congratulations to the British Red Cross for releasing this.

It got me thinking how different are the British Red Cross (BRC) and St John Ambulance (SJA). The obvious one that most people are unaware of is that BRC gets government funding because of its nature of disaster relief wheras SJA is self funded.

Now in the digital age most people will research an organisation using the internet.

British Red Cross
St John Ambulance

How shown up are SJA in relation to BRC? BRC focuses on everything it does in the community. It sells itself and demonstrates the services it provides. SJA on the other hand give you an NHQ phone number.

What is the point in SJA current media campaign when something as basic as their public website is so lacking in relation to their main competitiors.

If you were looking to volunteer with SJA I suspect most people give up. Wheras the BRC website is well structured, informative and appealing the SJA one is again a complete waste of time.

How important is public relations for a voluntary organisation? Well given that private ambulance companies are charging a third of what some voluntary organisations are I suspect a great deal. Wheras the BRC make it clear to the professional and thorough service you are getting, the SJA website is something a child could knock together in an afternoon.

Socially Acceptable Abuse

2010-08-15T18:09:00.003+01:00

Is it more socially acceptable to abuse ambulance staff than hospital staff?

Why is it when you tell people what you do they say "I bet you get no end of trouble on a Friday night" but its seemingly different for nurses and doctors.

Even patients (little scrotes mind you) will retort when you remind them abusing staff will get them nowhere once they get to hospital that they won't abuse the nurses.

Yet seemingly it is ok to threaten me and hurl language that would make a marine blush at me for an entire trip into hospital.

Fortunately the little reprobates will sooner or later end up in a gutter choking on their own vomit. Failing that they could just have their tonsils damaged by latest bloke that is funding their next fix. I can only hope the bloke manages to learn what the sensation of vocal cords on head of his penis is like.

Fortunately I know I'm feeling ill so wont wish instead for the little brats to sense a prodding in the stoma that they have got from their smoking since ten and an inevitable choking on HIV infested spunk filling their blackened lungs.

Well I wont write it down anyway...

Not doing well with this post

2010-07-09T18:12:00.003+01:00

Never mind I'll get round to it.

However as it's always important to be observant at work. I thought I would show you the following picture. Just to see how good your observation is...

Post Coming Soon

2010-05-15T15:13:00.001+01:00

A proper post is coming soon I promise but to keep you going until then

Upcoming General Election

2010-04-30T14:42:00.003+01:00

In the interests of democracy I have decided to upload some advertising for the political parties.

Attitudes

2010-03-31T13:59:00.002+01:00

I feel I could just post

http://member2.sja.org.uk/member/st-john-ambulance-blog/volunteer/plastic-paramedics.aspx

and explain to scroll down to Tom Daniels post and that would be enough. However I think I could possibly elaborate on how the lobotomised idiots post irritates me.

We should also have a big 'Volunteer' sticker. The public should not expect the same quality of service/professionalism as with an NHS Ambulance Service

Why the fuck not? Do not attempt to justify your ineptitude by hiding behind mantle of a volunteer. It is not an excuse that you are not being paid for being shit. A paramedic can volunteer with St John should they still carry the volunteer badge? Are they somehow less of a paramedic when they do it for free? Get a fucking grip.

This is why people use the term plastic paramedic. In between creating a rattling sound by shaking your head you obviously are perpetrating that you have some right to work at a poor standard. This is what people see and why you are exactly the sort of person who needs to leave the organisation for its reputation to improve.

St John Ambulance should NOT wear greens - Black and White is good (even though the design is indeed old fashioned) Choose Pink and Orange if you want us to be visible, I don't care - but definitely not the same colour as paramedics. I have the impression that people in favour of greens only want this so that they can act "as if" they were paramedics. The "new" uniform (if it ever comes out....) will continue the confusion...

Oh right so all NHS Ambulance staff are paramedics. Are they fuck. Green is generally accepted as identifying medical help. Paramedics are first aiders at their core (just very advanced ones with extensive medical training). Even control staff wear greens and it causes a grand total of ZERO problems. Thats one short of one for christs sake!

It is not about being paramedics. It is about being recognisable as help.

We should have a big "First Aid Tag" on the Hi Vis jackets - not just only "St John Ambulance" as the public may think we are qualified (which was what I thought before joining SJA)

We do have first aid on the jackets. More importantly though we are qualified as FIRST AIDERS. Just because you joined and were more overexcited than a paedophile working in santas grotto doesn't mean the rest of us share your one digit IQ (and your taste for children).

This isn't a case of somebody needing an attitude adjustment this is somebody who is dangerous to the progression and evolution of an organisation. Trying to justify poor standards and drag the organisation down to some kind of new low is exactly the sort of person who needs culling.

Equipment

2010-03-02T13:04:00.002Z

A big part of what I do involves the equipment I am provided with. Now granted it is a bit of get what you are given however occasionally this equipment is updated with newer models.

Great!

Well not so. You would think people would ask those that actually use it what we think of it. Take for example a Lifepak 15. It is very pretty the batteries last AGES however unless it is mounted centrally the ambulance is going to look as if the suspension is fucked. I have no idea why it needs to be so heavy. I am going to have to take special care to ensure every job I alternate which arm I carry it with else I will look like I spend too much time on one arm bandits or (more likely) that I really need to spend less time in a darkend room on the internet.

Given the amount of money invested in trying to reduce the amount of manual handling in the profession it amazes me that we have picked one of the heaviest bits of kit already present on the ambulance and decided to replace it with something that comparitively is like replacing kylie minogue with dawn french.

It may have all kinds of interesting extra bits to play with however you would suspect if it ended up on your face it would cause more damage than its worth.

Training Perfect People

2010-02-04T22:53:00.003Z

Tonight for a bit of a change I decided to volunteer some time to help train first aiders.

People volunteer their time for all sorts of reasons. I do it generally to help people improve and pass on my experiences and knowledge. Now I don't mind giving up my time to teach people who genuinely want to learn. However I do take issue to smart arse cunts who preach some random bollocks and when it is explained to them why its wrong begin shouting and throwing a tantrum despite the fact they are in their early 20s.

If you are too thick to understand that by pressing on a wound with a hand you are in fact controlling the wound then you have no right pretending you have the priviledge to consider communicating with higher beings than yourself such as me.

I definately don't expect you to tell me that despite the patient (aptly described in the scenario) as going into shock should be left sat upright in the middle of a floor while you fanny about with a bandage. Well I don't mind you asking me why this is wrong. I do have a fucking serious issue with you blurting out like some kind of retarded gorilla about how wrong I am, folding your arms, stomping away to whisper in somebody else's ear about how wrong I am.

Actually thats unfair to the retarded gorilla population. At least they would have a chance of tugging on the right thing for an orgasm. Though lord knows if by some miracle a passing amoeba managed to explain it to you then I can only hope nothing more than the gas of a wet fart comes out of the end. The idea you managing to get any of those cross eyed sperm anywhere near an egg and the resulting abomination makes me want to gnaw at my own face.

Truthfully there are degenerative brain diseases that you are immune to purely because of the lack of complexity in that part of your central nervous system. A brain tumour would have more chance of articulating something intelligent than the pair of cells currently rattling around in your head.

I do wonder if you physically have enough chromosomes to make up any sort of offspring. I suspect it is less of a double helix and more of a DNA rectangle. As long as you don't find a paralysed animal with a buck toothed vagina I think the rest of us are safe from having to waste perfectly good bullets on your children.

Bedbound Bariatrics

2009-12-15T17:48:00.002Z

Most things in nature are self regulating. For example if you eat so much that you are so fat you cannot physically drag yourself to the refrigerator, then that is nature making you lose some weight.

Now I don't care if you are giving them diet coke, feeding them anything other than carrot sticks is plain irresponsible. When working with equipment rated up to 28 stone and crews are working out whether the equipment can take the strain you are far too fucking fat.

I mean seriously just stop eating!

If you require what can only be described as a crane to get you out of bed then you should consider whether salad really tastes that bad. How in the love of god does your husband penetrate you? Maybe what looks like bondage gear is in fact the support structure to hold the fat folds out of the way?

Also if you have such a need to feed your wife what I can only presume is concentrated lard then you cannot be frustrated when she is uncomfortable because she is balooning over the sides of the trolley.

It is not the NHS purpose to have specially built ambulances available locally just so that they can winch your pet walrus into a cot. If it is coming from over an hour away that is because fortunately at the moment there isn't so many people who are eating the combined diet of a third world country every meal time.

Perhaps next time you are admitted you should be put in a room with a tap next to the bed and a packet of crisps on a table outside the room.

When you have starved enough that you can at least roll your sweaty sack of grease called a body over to the food you may have something to eat.

Scum

2009-12-14T17:25:00.002Z

At this festive time of year you would think "hey GrumpyAmbulanceDriver you must be cheerful? Even when you are no doubt working Christmas and New Years on normal pay?"

Well no.
BBC News has highlighted a new menace for the NHS.

The low life scum that do not see frontline emergency equipment as something that should be left for their family and friends but instead as a target for a quick buck.

Sat Navs are something I have heard of before and causes me massive frustration. For example last night I was over 60 miles away from my base station in an area I have never been to. I have literally no idea where anything is either patients or the route to the nearest A&E. I would like to hope that low life reprobates would realise that my ability to get to people in distress and transport them promptly to further help hinges on my ability to know where I am going and leave the equipment that tells me this information the fuck alone.

Unfortunately it appears that members of society with the intelligence of an average piece of geology lacks the moral compass of your average Nazi. These are exactly the sort of mammals that I would not wish to waste the soap from the jet wash on when cleaning the remains of their tracksuit covered corpse off the front of my van.

I trully would support a notion for donating their bodies to medical science. Unfortunately due to their stealing I don't think the NHS can afford to pay for any of the anaesthetics or poisons so medical students will just have to practice on live cadavers.

The noise should at least get them ready for an average weekend in A&E.

When it is a child

2009-10-18T16:54:00.002+01:00

They can train you how to circulate oxygenated blood around the body
They can train you how to remove the patient from the house
They can train you how to drive in emergency conditions

They cannot train you how to console the hysterical mother
They cannot train you how to stay calm when everyone around you is in panic
They cannot train you how to return to work the next day

Anybody can understand that it is not going to be a nice feeling
Nobody can explain how exactly you should feel

The final weapon in an ambulance drivers arsenal

2009-09-26T17:06:00.002+01:00

Go on guess...

This?

Or this?

Maybe this?

Or even this?

No your wrong. In fact the final weapon to deploy is the screaming attendant out of the passenger window.

A reputable parcel company I understand has deadlines to meet and obviously has to make progress through traffic. Not that I am convinced they need to speed in residential areas and generally drive like a man without the gift of sight.

However I honestly doubt that whatever letter or parcel they were trying to get to somewhere was more important than my ambulance trying to get to a lady who couldn't breathe. I would venture that your parcel can afford to be a few minutes late and nobody will die however every now and again people who do not breathe have a nasty habit of keeling over.

If you honestly cannot hear a vehicle horn, an airhorn, and the varying different siren tones I was engaging as well as noticing the flashing blue lights and headlights illuminating your little van and everything around you then perhaps you may want to consider an alternative career.

When it is getting to the point of an attendant leaning out of a window trying to gain your attention as you ignorantly pull in front of my vehicle, when you see all those lovely cars moving out of the way, just so you can get your parcel to the destination, did it never occur to you that nobody gives a flying fuck what you do?

Then as several minutes later of you enjoying people moving out of your way onto the kerb on heavy traffic you decide that maybe you have pressed home the advantage enough and it is time to let that rather irritating vehicle behind past you instead stop blocking the road and shrug at the attendant who is trying to explain to you to MOVE OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY

With any luck the parcel you were carrying is laced with anthrax or better yet radioactive material in the hope that it will sterilise whatever excuse for a pair of testicles you carry round in your trousers. If your sperm aren't swimming like an amputee with a heavy dose of sedatives then I am deeply concerned for the future of whatever subhuman species you could possibly father.

This is of course assuming that you overcome the problem of how as a delivery driver with a GCS in negative numbers could actually find a woman that possibly stifle laughter for the brief few seconds required for you to perform the task.

Health Science

2009-09-21T20:17:00.004+01:00

What in fucks name is the point of Health Science except keeping people off the dole that are too thick to do Medicine?

I recently saw a post from a St John member about methods of looking after patients and I was drawn to a comment by a member.

"part of being a good practitioner (at whatever level) is moving from being unconsciously incompetent to consciously competent to unconsciously competent at whatever skill so that you don't have to concentrate on it and you can maintain a detachment which allows you to assimilate data as you do your job"

This raised my hackles slightly and I decided to google for this waste of bandwidth and I discovered he appears to be a member of St John Ambulance in Kent studying Health Science.

It hit me, he is a wannabe doctor. That and apparently a dangerous moron.

The sheer concept of anyone being ARROGANT enough to think they can work with real patients in the real world and not FUCKING CONCENTRATE is infuriating. Harold Shipman was pretty damn good at killing patients and even he concentrated on it so how do you think you can save patients without concentrating?!

He is exactly the sort of barrel scraping scum that DESERVES to be on a Health Science (aka waste of time) degree and unfortunately the image a lot of the NHS have of St John Ambulance as an organisation.

Being a good practitioner is not about being detached or doing things without concentrating. It's about caring, its about the fear and adrenaline every time your with a patient and the drive to make sure you are constantly improving because you are never perfect.

This diploma carrying, waste of a student loan smacktard is nothing more than a poor first aider. The sheer idea of him being allocated a place on a medical degree makes my blood boil. At least the health science degree should keep him from attending too many duties and further tarnishing his organisations reputation.

Gyppos

2009-09-04T08:03:00.001+01:00

Nothing seems to generate so much anger amongst my colleagues as pikeys. However they don't exactly endear themselves when you arrive on scene of somebody knocked down by a car to be greeted with "you have been fucking ages where the fuck were you"

That's right you oxygen starved retard, we were sat chilling out thinking "na fuck it how bad can it be?" In fact we ignored out Jedi powers and decided not to predict the accident and come and park just round the corner waiting for it to happen.

Do these dregs of society not realise Minority Report is Science Fiction?

The explanation given was the she had been on the floor for forty minutes. The call originated 25 minutes ago. I suppose you can give five minutes for them to work out how to operate a phone but even so.

Next job was to get aggressive with the police constable who was there for his lack of getting us there any quicker. I really hate it too when they don't use those teleporters from Star Trek. After all those taxes that other people pay are surely if nothing else to pay for the utmost in care for those that like to drive around at 10mph in horse drawn carriages leaving shit all over the road.

If you are so worried about the person on the floor why would you deliberately waste another 2 minutes threatening the emergency services that have arrived and complaining rather than getting out of the fucking way so we can assess the patient?

The only thing more indicative of an IQ that could be measured as a fraction would have been the phrase "I pay your wages". Fortunately I don't think anybody there had a concept of what a "wage" was, much least of being mistaken in thinking that they were contributing to society in some way.

ALso as an aside. When you stink of alcohol, you do not know if your in pain and you cannot string a coherent sentance together it is not unreasonable to be asked if you have had a drink. It is however fucking unreasonable for your partner to then threaten the person asking with what can only be described as remedial english. You clearly have not just been drinking water and it IS relevant after a RTA.

However in hindsight I suspect that you probably couldn't string a sentance together even if you were sober. Fortunately for us you have a perfect grasp of swearing and threats to keep us convinced that you have an open airway and can breathe.

Hopefully next time it's a lorry.

Purpose of the ambulance

2009-09-03T01:57:00.002+01:00

It's saving lives isn't it? Well recently I've heard multiple times how ambulances don't save lives its doctors. Now I'm damned sure doctors kill enough people so stands to reason they also must save a few when they get it right but is it as simple as that?

To me the idea of emergency medicine and singling out an individual and saying "They have saved that persons life" is far too simplistic to be taken seriously. I have considered deeply in my time on standby and have conceived an analogy.

Famously amongst my group of friends some idiot student medic once said "I don't have to worry about good CPR because it's the drugs that save people". This is wrong on many levels which I won't go into but then he a typical rich boy, first year moron and taking pot shots at him is like fishing with a daisy cutter,

I think though a similar thought process to this can be applied to emergency medicine.

To me the first aiders/ambulance are the BLS (Basic Life Support). They are the first bit to happen and their job in the whole scheme is to keep the person going while waiting for more advanced techniques. Without the BLS of actually getting to a person and taking them to hospital the rest of it falls on its face.

Then the original doctors/nurses in the emergency department are to me the AED operators. They start working to give a patient a better chance and early access to them is crucial to a good outcome.

Finally the consultants/surgeons/specialist units are the ALS drugs in this scenario. They are their to provide the very utmost for the patient.

Now we all know it is rare (not impossible) for a person to come round with BLS and likewise rarely an ambulance crew/first aider might save a life on their own. AED's can save somebody as well and are much more likely to and likewise the drugs/intubation helps further.

Nobody would ever point to a particular part of CPR and say "you know what, that bit was what saved his/her life" so why do we feel the need to do it with the team that works together for patients.

It frustrates me that people feel the need to pick out an individual as responsible for saving somebodies life when it is in fact a group of people working together to perform their roles. I don't expect in my job to be credited with saving somebodies life but I'll be damned if I'm going to accept that a doctor deserves all the credit.

If the BLS doesn't work and the airway isn't open then the rest is pointless.

Job Satisfaction

2009-08-25T15:37:00.002+01:00

Inspired by Nick

It is well known that I have literally no interest in ever studying medicine or nursing. So after reading this I pondered what draws me to ambulance work yet keeps me away from these other professions.

I have concluded it is the challenge. I relish the variety of environments that I work in and know each and every time that bell goes I could be walking into anything. I suspect that being a doctor or a nurse in a hospital or surgery would bore me to tears with the surroundings. Also rather than be managing a medical team and in all honesty sometimes be very distant from patient care when I'm out there it is just me and my crew mate.

While I can understand Nick's drive for clinical independance and the variety working in, for example, an A&E department would bring, nothing to me is going to beat the unique position of being in the middle of a beach at 3 o clock in the morning trying to think of the best way to get a 17 year old girl out of a mangled box of metal whilst my brain slowly freezes.

The satisfaction for me is being that shining ray of hope that first arrives at anything and everything and conquers all the unique challenges of working in the outside world in trying to adapt the skills I have to get somebody to people like Nick in one piece so he can use his skills to work out how to fix whats wrong.

Of course I would welcome anyone to join the medical field as a GP that doesn't have frontal lobe damage. The mere addition of Nick would probably double the average IQ of GPs in England, however I suspect that his calling will be something a bit more emergency related.

Can of Worms

2009-08-07T15:52:00.003+01:00

Some people might say I can be quite opinionated and objectionable. Maybe even a little bit rant like?

Personally I see little to no evidence of this.

However I am mightily upset that a colleague of mine when talking about issues regarding to weight loss stated to an entire group of people that mental illnesses like that were often

"made up conditions to make people feel better"

Guess what sports fans? This is the illuminated attitude of somebody that might be picking up someone you care about in the near future.

Personally I think his lack of a fully functioning frontal lobe is no excuse for his complete lack of an IQ high enough to grasp the concept that mental health conditions really are illnesses.

Though I must admit I would question his ability to manage to manage an open fracture so the idea of managing a condition that isn't illuminated by flashing neon signs and a directional indicator would at best be like steven hawkins trying to insert his penis into a fallen over milk bottle whilst blindfolded, and with a punctured tyre.

Development

2009-08-07T15:40:00.002+01:00

You will have to excuse the lack of updates. I have spent the last seven weeks in training for my new role with the ambulance service. From today I am officially working for the ambulance service.

More importantly you will have to excuse this article because of the drink.

Anyway I have noticed throughout my training there is two schools of thought

Thought 1: Wow thats interesting, that could really help me in my treatment of patients and maybe even help me save somebodies life on day. Tell me more let me understand and develop myself into a better health care worker

Now I personally think I fall into this group

Thought 2: Do we need to know this for exam? Then why are you wasting my time with it? I don't want to know anything that I don't NEED to know

Now frankly fuck off and get another job. If that is your attitude do you really care about the people you are looking after. You NEVER know it all. You NEVER can learn too much when it comes to healthcare. If you haven't got the intellectual capacity or drive to constantly seek to better yourself and your practices then you are in the wrong profession.

Am I alone in this view? The simple fact of this matter is I wouldn't want some remedial class moron coming to pick up a member of my family when they have learnt the bare minimum to scrape by a classroom excercise.

Surely a crucial part of working in any job and being good at it, is constantly reevaluating your skills and techniques and critiquing yourself? Not whining like a slug rolling round in salt that it's wasting your time being told of stuff you don't need to know.

I wonder if these oxygen starved sheep would be satisfied if it was their parents on the receiving end of their ham fisted, illeducated practice.

Maybe I am wrong for thinking that bare minimum should never be enough for anybody to be satisfied.

Babies

2009-05-27T23:45:00.000+01:00

Paediatrics are a strange item. Children do wierd things. Fortunately parents often know when something is wrong. For example the mother of one four week old baby I saw yesterday. She had tried repeatedly to tell the health care professionals that her baby was wrong and it was not an infection and nobody listened.

Fortunately somebody eventually did an ultrasound and realised that this baby had a block in its digestive system that meant it was actually receiving no nourishment and was slowly starving to death.

Cue the blue light brigade. Turning up at hospital to collect this little bundle of joy we were expecting something a few years old, I mean it was in a childs seat how bad can it WHAT THE FUCK?! Is that even a human being or a doll?! HOW FUCKING SMALL IS THAT? JESUS SHIT I COULD COUGH AND SNAP THAT THING.

This manifested itself in "Good afternoon we'll be taking you today"

This brings me to my point now. When taking the baby out of the hospital complete with two ambulance crew and nasal canula in situ why do people come and try and touch the baby. Clearly it is fucking tiny and probably not very well so why in christs name would you come and breathe your germs all over it?

For fucks sake get over your menopause and get out of my fucking way. I don't care if your ovaries are shriveled and your tubes are blocked with a vagina drier than the sahara desert stop interfering with the clearly sick child I am moving.

People are fucking morons.

2009-05-19T21:39:00.002+01:00

Imagine my surprise upon arriving to collect a patient without a paramedic today I was greeted by a doctor saying "well whats the difference then between that ambulance his own car"

Thats right without a paramedic on an ambulance you may as well not go. Ignore the blue lights, the sirens, the oxygen, the AED the fact you are not actually driving the fucking thing.

Where in shites name did you get your medical degree from? Staples? I didn't realise the NHS accepted photoshop jobs.

Maybe your colour blind, well fully blind as you cannot notice that its a fucking ambulance. In fact if he could drive himself to the hospital why am I picking him up in the first place?

I hope somebody takes the time to talk to you fucking SLOWLY about what an ambulance is. Maybe your of the miracle wagon variety? In fact for a routine transfer where the patient requires just a stretcher what do you expect a paramedic to do? You don't want him cannulating, intubating and as he is completely stable you will not want cardiac drugs pushing.

FUCK OFF. Don't sit and moan about the fact you didn't get a paramedic vehicle when you didn't fucking ask for one. You asked for an urgent vehicle and got an urgent vehicle. I hope you get your leg caught in a lift and get dragged up slicing your leg off and coating the inside of the lift shaft with your blood whilst you scream helplessly leaving a trickle of blood as the doors open at the top.

There is no need to be so fucking rude because you are a moron and the best you could manage after medical school was being a GP which rather than be good at your are in fact hopeless at. You give the term doctor a bad name and frankly sooner you are struck off the better.

How to Manage a Care Home

2009-04-27T19:20:00.002+01:00

It is very difficult in this day and age to manage a care home effectively. As such I am going to explain concisely using an example at work a good way of developing the relations of the NHS staff around you in the best interest of the people in your home.

Start by calling a doctor for your sick resident. I know its a chore but trully it is for the best. When the doctor decides the patient is ill and requires an urgent ambulance be sure to thank the doctor for his time and professionalism and see him to the door.

When the ambulance arrives make sure you are too busy to speak to them. Also ensure the other care staff in the home have no idea of whats going on. There is no need to pass any information to the ambulance staff. They are members of a jedi clan after all!

When the staff tell the ambulance crew the patient looks much worse than when the doctor came be sure to burst in and interrupt and generally make it confusing to get an answer out of the patient. Complain loudly about how the doctor has already seen the patient and an ambulance should just be there to take them to hospital.

Complain more when the ambulance staff want to do a few checks before loading up. If you have prepared properly now is the time to send in the family to further get in the way of the ambulance staff. After all they are wasting time and this will no doubt hurry them up. Be sure when they have loaded the patient to make a point of getting in your own car and following them to the hospital.

Don't forget complain some more about how inconveniant a time the ambulance has arrived. Right when some other people in the care home require feeding. It is a free NHS provided taxi service after all. They should arrive in 15 minute pre booked slots surely? At very least with a bit of complaining they might come back in half an hour when you have fed other patients. Don't worry about the patient. The doctor saw them 4 hours ago so they will be fine. Doctors are in fact able to cheat death you know.

Don't forget to look flustered and amazed when your patient is wheeled straight into the resus room at hospital because they are going into severe shock. How could you have known that they were getting worse? You can't possibly be expected to LISTEN to the staff in your care home when they express concern somebody is getting much worse very quickly. Those ambulance types are probably being amateurs about it, after all the DOCTOR saw them earlier so they surely can't be that bad. Remember before about cheating death?

Don't forget after all this go home and sleep soundly in bed with your collection of chocolate cake and teddys to fill the void in your life because you are single and fat. In fact don't forget to complain some more to your mirror about the other people in the world. How can you be expected to care after people in a care home. Note it must be a mirror because nobody with a soul could stand spending more than 2 minutes in your presence you self centered, arrogant excuse for a human being.

Don't worry when you die you'll be going somewhere warm. With any luck you'll be able to go there before too many more of your residents leave the home permanently.

Nothing beats the support of a good GP

2009-03-18T22:37:00.002Z

It is of no secret that I don't have the most patience with GP's.

Went to collect a lady today that was described as having acute confusion. Common thing amongst old people. However what is not common is being told that if you come anywhere near her she is going to attack you with the boiling hot tea cup in her hand.

I mean who attacks with a tea cup?

Regardless we don't have the right to forcibly remove someone. We rang the GP as it was pretty obvious this poor lady didn't have the mental capacity to refuse transport to ask what he wanted to do.

When explaining to the GP that the patient was refusing to go anywhere and threatening to attakc us his response was "Well on my notes it says that she agreed with me to go to hospital"

Oh thanks fucking Einstein. I'll tell the lady that the GP said she should go. Even though she thinks the carers are poisoning her food. For fucks sake you useless old fart, just because your barely legible paperwork says the woman wants to go doesn't mean that she wants to go any more.

Also asking us "Can't you try convincing her?" what in fucks name do you think we were doing? Do you think we said "fair enough lets go home" when we see a clearly very ill woman with no mental clarity. She has a page and a half of medication which she hasn't taken for days because she is so confused.

Why in christs name was she not sectioned? Oh yes thats right because shes not ill enough to be sectioned. GP plan was to wait for her to get more ill and section her. Why in christs name are you sending a patient to a place full of sick people and infection if she is not ill enough. I'll tell you why. Because you are a useless sack of shit lazy GP that is more interested in staying at the surgery than actually looking after people in your care.

It's no wonder that most of people I work alongside think GP stands for "Get Paramedic". It concerns me that the firs line of help for most people is their GP and despite fact he believed the woman needed to be in hospital for assessment he did not feel it was worth him coming out and calling a social worker to section her.

Don't get me wrong I don't believe a section is always correct but if this woman was as ill as he thought and seemed to be then it was in her interest to be sectioned and she was missing so many drugs that should be in her system including such amusment as opiate withdrawl but not enough for a doctor to do something useful.

Bringing the Noise

2008-12-25T19:59:00.002Z

An important part of ambulance work is the ability to "Bring the noise". This involves the strobing of some blue lights and some ear shattering electrically generated noises.

This is generally followed by some insanely quick driving and some bruises for the attendant working on the vehicle. It's seen as a big part of ambulance work and to be honest what a lot of people would imagine would be the most fun.

It is not.

Your job when driving in those conditions is to try and avoid hitting any of the morons that you are sharing the road with. Why is it when the sirens are screaming the lights are flashing and the rev of the engine roars Mr BMW man still feels that he can squeeze through a gap and therefore block the progress of the emergency vehicle.

Worse he then turns into a mentally retarded paraplegic while he in vain wrestles with his vehicle controls. I swear I could have put a brain damaged ape in that car and got it moved out of the way quicker.

Do people not realise one day its going to be there fucking relative in that van and they are going to piss and whine about how people wont move out of the way. You are NOT in any more of a hurry than I am so move your fucking status symbol, making up for tiny cock, stupidly driven car out of my way so I can get clear of cunts like yourself and possibly even save a life today.

I trully hope your car broke down and when getting out you caught your hand in the bonnet, and not just any hand, your wanking hand so when you go back to your lonely flat and you wish to masterbate using your own tears as lube, you cannot, and are forced to instead fornicate with your pillow giving you an allergic rash which ultimately leads to an immensely painful swelling where you are then trundled to hospital SLOWLY and your penis is amputated without any pain relief as other CUNTS like yourself are holding up the vehicles trying to bring it to you and you inevitably die through lack of blood as some moron has crashed into it wasting the blood that would have saved your life.

Saving Lives...It's what we do

2008-12-23T20:35:00.003Z

Is it? Is it REALLY?

I have become recently aware that despite the vision of the public this is not what my job is. I am employed to lie, manipulate and hold back all human emotion to move human cargo from point A to point B.

My job is to approach each patient in a methodical manner to provide the best care possible. What this in fact seems to mean is to develop an ability to turn off all human emotion. I can't afford to panic, or get upset or angry with the patients I move I have to be working by the book and in the calmest manner possible.

Today I collected a gentleman who had accidently overdosed in an effort to stop the pain that he had been to hospital twice for and been fobbed off each time. He didn't even know he had overdosed. He genuinely was just trying to stop the pain.

I couldn't get upset, couldn't tell him he had probably permanently damaged his liver and kidneys. Couldn't get upset when moving him back to A&E and his condition deteroiated. No. My job was to stay calm turn off every basic human emotion and get him to hospital.

Tonight I've come back and looked in the mirror. What I've seen is someone that I don't even recognise. When I found out that he was actually quite poorly later from another ambulance crew I trully didn't care. I didn't want to know. I had delivered him safely to A&E caught the serious problem and had reacted in the best way possible.

Worse this ability to switch off has permeated into the rest of my life. Troubles at home have caused me to switch off every emotional pain receptor in my brain. It bounces off me now and rather than pretending not to care I really don't. I feel nothing.

It has got so bad I no longer know whether when I do feel something if it's me feeling it or me trying to convince myself I feel something just so that I can feel like a normal human being.

At moment I fear that I have destroyed the part of me that cares in an effort to be better. I arrived at a job yesterday upset and 30 seconds out it was gone. No feelings no nothing. What kind of a person can turn off everything, shut down every last piece of humanity?

It appears that in an effort to try and be everything patients need me to be I have turned myself into a robotic machine that cannot care about anything or anyone. I don't know how to go back. I don't even know if its possible for me to go back.

I think I may have destroyed everything in me that makes me a human being.

Neighbours... Everybody needs fucking neighbours

2008-12-18T09:34:00.002Z

I get why relatives are pillocks. No really I do. They want the best for their relative and they are so stressed and worried they end up fucking up the care I can give their relatives. Angry as it makes me I understand.

What I don't understand is why a next door fucking neighbour insists on getting in the way and telling me how to do my job. If I make a decision based on something clinical its because its what I'm trained to do and I have an understanding that backs the decision. As such if somebody is feeling faint and their systolic blood pressure is 90 I will lie them down.

This is for a simple reason. It makes it easier for the heart to pump blood (and therefore oxygen) to the brain. I do not expect to have to argue with a next door neighbour about why I will not sit them upright when they are feeling faint. I also do not expect to be told that I have to move them in a certain (and to be honest dangerous) way just because they don't think its neccesary for me to use the handling equipment I have on my ambulance.

I'd like to see the dozy cow drive from one end of the city to the other in rush hour in 20 mins. No I can't drive at 90mph the whole fucking way so it will take twenty minutes and frankly if it was any of the people who don't know the roads as well as I do it would have been more like 40.

Seriously I don't expect to be treated like I fiddle children in my spare time and I have a career in raping animals just because I am doing my job and doing it fucking properly. As such I don't expect someone with the clinical knowledge of a grapefruit to get in my way comprimising the safety and stability of my patient just because their favourite soap isn't on for a few hours.

I am guessing she was probably dropped down the stairs at some point and if not she should have been.

Care Assistants

2008-11-21T19:59:00.000Z

Only a short post. Just a quick thought. Why is it that a patient should be being discharged from a hospital nearly in tears because and I quote "The nurses here have been so nice to me, the carers, they only do what they want to do"

Why should any patient be dreading returning to their home because the carers are unwilling to provide them the same level of basic care that an overstretched and understaffed hospital ward can achieve.

Discuss?

Patient Care

2008-11-20T18:40:00.001Z

As has been previously implied poor patient care is something that causes me a slight irritation. Sadly it ranges widely from person to person. To clarify for people who are unable to understand sarcasm it isn't confined to people working in a particular role.

However one role that tends to contain more than its fair share of liabilities is bank workers. Bank workers make me tear my hair out. You would think as they only work from time to time they would be full of patience and enjoying the opportunity to use those skills that they don't get to practice often.

However what instead I see is frustration at people moving slowly and what can only be described as aggression when trying to get them to do something.

How is it so hard to forget that we move people. We don't move animals or plants or object we move people. These people could easily one day be your friends or family. How is it then that people feel need to treat the elderly like a nuisance.

If I ever see an attendant push a patient to try and make them move faster I will literally feed them their own face. It is not acceptable to shout at a patient that "Your not moving your legs we don't have all day you need to move your legs"

I am currently disgusted by hearing this old lady scared and alone on her way into a hospice manage to whisper the words "I'm trying" whilst looking at the floor ready to burst into tears. No person should ever have to feel like that.

Angry isn't really the word at the moment. Despite my gestures of "No" and "Stop That" an attendant pushed a patient whilst I was supporting them nearly hurting both me and the patient.

I'm too angry at moment to even make an amusing anecdote or attempt to put some clever spin on this. I've been sat stewing over it for a while now hoping that I would stop feeling so furious and wouldn't post this.

At moment I am ashamed to be part of the same organisation as this individual and I can only take some comfort in knowing how well the lady will have been treated in her final hours in that hospice.

Nurses

2008-11-17T18:16:00.000Z

Why is it never a nurses fault? Why is it that I am expected to deviate from operating procedures that are there to protect me just because a nurse isn't organised.

I'm fed up of fat nurses that sit on their arse all day complaining because they didn't realise that the stretcher outpatient I am bringing in will require a bed to be in while they are seen.

No I will not leave my patient on my trolley with you regardless of how long they will be the rules are very clear for me. Don't. Now why do I have to repeat myself while you make snotty comments to patient how it isn't the patients fault that a lot of hassle is caused while looking at me.

If you sorted your fucking act out and did your job properly you wouldn't have to make snide digs at the ambulance crew who oddly enough are doing their jobs properly. Really is it that hard to go to the next ward for a PAT slide? Trully is it too much for your patient care to use the appropriate equipment to move them off a hard ambulance trolley.

Patient care is fucking shocking in some places. I hope they get hit by a bus.

Result

2008-11-10T08:38:00.000Z

Well I managed to pass. Which I'm pleased about. A quick thanks to all the people who helped me revise and put me through endless drills to make sure I knew my stuff. A day off today (A what?!) and then back to work tomorrow.

Pressure is on

2008-11-09T07:01:00.000Z

This morning I am less grumpy and more stressed. Today I have my final exams for the emergency transport attendant course I have been working on.

To pass this today I must prove that I have the capability to work as an ETA in future and have the maturity and professionalism to provide a level of care consistent with that. I'll have to demonstrate the use of equipment such as long boards and extrication vests in trauma scenarios as well as a clear methodology for approaching medical patients.

I've worked very hard to get the opportunity to attend this course and have throw a great deal of time and effort into passing it. I'm very nervous and not very confident.

Hopefully later I will be able to post that I am a more qualified (and no doubt extra grumpy) ambulance man!

Reason to shut down an ambulance entrance

2008-10-23T19:18:00.001+01:00

Of course you are thinking, "What an idiot who the hell closes an ambulance entrance?" I mean sure, there can't be that much reason to close an ambulance entrance and make people walk across from the other side of the car park at one of the large cancer hospitals.

Well you are as ill informed as I. I never realised the obvious truth of why you would make cancer sufferers walk across a car park dodging cars in the yorkshire wind. I mean I feel so stupid.

The Duchess of York coming to visit.

Of course HRH, wait whats her name? No I have no fucking idea either. Who the fuck is she? Anyway regardless she needed the bomb squad to check the hospital and needed to commandeer the entire ambulance entrance to the wing of the hospital we were delivering and collecting from.

In mean time she causes a complete degradation in patient care and massively affects the privacy of patients who have to go past dignitaries and tv cameras just to make their routine appointments either by walking, wheelchairs or stretchers.

I am completely disgusted by this. Getting dicked by a relatively low member of the royal family does not entitle you the right to degrade the patient care and comfort of all those cancer sufferers.

I don't care how many ugly children you've had to look after. Your job was getting fucked by a royal. You got paid well and life was good. Do not shit all over peoples healthcare you self centered tosser.

Shame too on the hospital for telling ambulances that they couldn't use that entrance.

On the plus side because of the extra inconveniance I got to hear from an elderly gentleman how when he was younger his ambition was "to bag a redhead" so that he could see if "the collars matched the cuffs" and apparently they do, so yeah learn something every day. Seems with ambulance work its always something creepy mind. I wont even elaborate on what he told my attendant about accidently getting a lap dance of a man dressed as a woman in Las Vegas. No thats for another day...

The Sadder Side of the Job

2008-10-01T19:45:00.000+01:00

Normally after doing a crawler transport I would be raging about the idiots on the road who cannot understand a blue light ambulance doing 20mph probably has somebody very ill and in a lot of pain in the back however today was different.

It might seem like fun and games ambulance work, we chat to hot nurses drink tea and cruise around in our air conditioned van. You might not see why we get paid for such a lifestyle. Today was the kind of day that makes you want to change your job.

Normally discharges to the hospice don't cause any real problems. Like an A&E crew you meet the person drive them to the place and hand them over to the staff there. Unfortunately as a transport attendent you get to see the same people again and again and a few of them become good friends and you genuinely can become attached to them.

Recently we have been taking a gentleman for radiotherapy. He is a lovely guy. He is chatty and friendly and its a joy to take him in comfort to his appointments. Today we recognised the name on the job sheet as his. He had suddenly become worse and had been admitted to hospital. Our first job of the day was to move him from hospital to hospice.

It turns out he had suddenly got worse and was now coughing blood and leaking it from his nasal passage. The doctors do not know why. His terminal cancer appears to have reached the end of its attack on this gentleman.

So instead of raging and swearing about the idiots that cause me to brake hard, swerve and generally cause pain and discomfort to the patients in my care I'd like to dedicate this post to a man alone in his bed in the hospice. I hope his final days are under heavy pain relief and he is allowed to die peacefully after the suffering up to this point. I also hope the hospice staff can help ease his anxiety and fear and give him a final few days of happiness.

When you have no idea what to do...

2008-09-29T23:05:00.000+01:00

Possibly the worst fear for anyone working on ambulances is when you get to a situation where you honestly do not know what to do. Fortunately usually the years of training and experience kick in and remind you and you get stuck in.

However you can always rely on the fact that joe public and his mother with no training or any idea of what they are talking about will always be able to give you sound advice should you completely fail to realise a plan of action.

For example today when taking a stretcher discharge home on arrival at the home I enquired with the relative as to where exactly I would be taking the patient and the answer I was helpfully supplied with was "In the house". Thank christ for compulsory education. With this nugget of information I was able to finally come to the difficult conclusion that I would have to walk past the relative and locate the receiving bed on my own.

But the help of the public doesn't end there. These pillars of society when asked if they would mind moving their car so I could reverse right up to the door nearest the room I was aiming for to maintain dignity and try and avoid bouncing a stretcher over gravel looked at me as if I had just fingerbanged their dead great grandmother whilst wiping my arse with their childs head.

I only hope that when I get old I can manage to raise children that are able to muster the same level of intelligence and common sense that these gifted individudals were clearly blessed with. Sadly I think in reality if my children grew up to be anywhere near the capability of these people a very late abortion would be on the cards. They trully would be an advert for euthanasia.

How blind do you have to be to miss an ambulance?

2008-09-25T17:35:00.000+01:00

What kind of a fucking retard blocks in an ambulance? Well I found out, a decorater. In his rush to attend the emergency of decorating he took it upon himself to abandon his emergency vehicle directly in front of an ambulance blocking it in.

Fortunately he was only five or ten minutes before he nonchalantly wandered back to check whether the ambulance wanted to go and graciously moved it to the spare parking spot that was there when he first arrived.

Thank god for drivers like him. I hope he gets his dick caught in the handbrake.