Wow.

My brain overfloweth.

The new workplace is lovely, the staff are nice, I have a lovely boss and there is a real opportunity to deal with patients and make them happier and healthier.

It's pretty much perfect.

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Well, I say it's perfect - but there is but one pubic hair on the bar of soap of pure awesomeness.

I would like to start with an apology.

A little while ago, I asked the question 'What is it that makes an ambulance'. I then went on to inform you that the only equipment that an ambulance requires is a defibrillator and a bag-valve-mask. I may have made the suggestion that this shows the priority that the LAS has on patient care.

But I must apologise, for I made a mistake.

You don't need the defibrillator.

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I've not been writing because I've been incredibly busy of late, working my normal LAS shifts (my last shift is on Friday, three more to go and, yes, I'm counting the hours), plus the paperwork for my new job (currently filling out the second Criminal Records Check form because I was sent an out of date one earlier), as well as all the normal stuff that keeps us busy, like laundry and shopping and making sure my Sky+ box doesn't get filled up with too many programmes.

Hopefully this will all soon change, giving me more time to put finger to keyboard.

'Male, collapsed in street - cannot see if he is breathing'.

Once more I found myself speeding towards a drunk in the street. It's *always* a drunk in the street, except of course on the one occasion when we don't whizz to scene - then they will be dead.

The Sod's Law of collapsed or deceased patients.

Like many of the drunk calls, we also had the information that 'caller will not approach patient', of course not, because the 'possibly dead' person is drunk, smelly, and possibly violent.

I recently had my last ever night shift, I would have written abut it earlier but the effects of the shift work had basically knocked me on my arse and made me incapable of doing anything except sleeping and dozing on the sofa.

It was, ultimately, a not unusual shift - no jobs that leapt out as being anything out of the ordinary.

To whom it may concern,

I wish to resign from my post as an EMT-3 in the London Ambulance Service. If possible I would like to go onto a bank contract so that I may work the occasional shift.

I would appreciate it if you could tell me my last working day as soon as possible as I am moving elsewhere in the NHS and they would like to know the earliest date that I can start.

The monster, who was once a man, sat on the bonnet of the burnt out car and looked out across the London night.

He was deciding what to do, after all immortality could get boring after a while. So he sat on the car and tried to decide whether he should let himself die.

The problem, he thought, was that with endless years the space in your mind would fill up - forgotten names, faces without names, memories blurring into one another.

The NHS White Paper is out and I've read pages and pages of analysis, although I'm yet to read the White Paper myself. It's sitting in my reading queue waiting to be read.

The big change is the PCTs who currently 'purchase' healthcare will go the way of the dodo to be replaced by 'consortia' of GPs. The thought being that GPs know better the needs of their community.

While I am sure that there are plenty of conscientious, well trained, thoughtful and management minded GPs out there, certainly in my part of London they seem a bit few and far between.

You would think that it is pretty obvious what us ambulance people do; pick up sick people, treat them and then take them to hospital.

If you've read this blog over the last few years you will have realised that we do much more than that.

It's why I carry a Swiss army knife, because more than once I've been called to fix something.

The other day I had one of the weirder calls, it was sent to us as 'Having heart attack because of two boxes'.

Needless to say this piqued our interest.

We arrived as scene quickly, after all it was a 'Cat A' call and so

It would appear that the radio system that the LAS uses has been in the news of late - claims that it doesn't work in the rain, or that vehicles are without radios.

Or vehicles use the 'Airwave' standard, a digital network shared by, amongst others, the police. We have a main set that is fixed to the ambulance and should have two handsets that we carry everywhere with us.