It's been two months since I last blogged, and I think that this is nature's way of telling me that this blog is finished.

When I started writing this I never thought that it would take off in the way that it did - two books, a radio play, opportunities to speak to lots of people at once and of course the upcoming TV series.

But all good things come to an end and, since leaving the London Ambulance Service, my life has settled down somewhat.

Which means that I have far less to write about the ambulance service, which is what this blog very quickly became about.

So I've decided to put this blog into a 'Deep Freeze'. So the links, posts and everything else will remain here, but I won't be updating it any more. In a fortnight I'll close down the commenting system so that I don't have to spend the rest of my natural life removing spam comments.

The reasoning behind this is that this blog was supposed to be about anything - but due to it taking off as an 'ambulance blog', I felt that I was 'cheating' if I wrote something that wasn't about working on the...

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It's been two months since I last blogged, and I think that this is nature's way of telling me that this blog is finished.

When I started writing this I never thought that it would take off in the way that it did - two books, a radio play, opportunities to speak to lots of people at once and of course the upcoming TV series.

But all good things come to an end and, since leaving the London Ambulance Service, my life has settled down somewhat.

Which means that I have far less to write about the ambulance service, which is what this blog very quickly became about.

So I've decided to put this blog into a 'Deep Freeze'. So the links, posts and everything else will remain here, but I won't be updating it any more. In a fortnight I'll close down the commenting system so that I don't have to spend the rest of my natural life removing spam comments.

The reasoning behind this is that this blog was supposed to be about anything - but due to it taking off as an 'ambulance blog', I felt that I was 'cheating' if I wrote something that wasn't about working on the...

Continues, Read More...

The interesting thing about my changed work practices is that I'm now much closer to my patients.

I don't mean I feel like holding their hands or buying the Christmas presents, I mean I'm physically closer to them.

Which seems strange, after all the back of an ambulance is certainly more cramped than the examination room that I use to diagnose, treat and educate my patients.

The problem is that I find myself having to get much closer to my patients to examine them.

As an example - if I were to pick up a healthy looking person with a sore throat and a cough, I wouldn't get too close to them. I'd plug them into the machinery of blood pressure, oxygen levels and temperature, then take a seat across the way from them while they coughed and spluttered and made out to be much sicker than they really were.

Now, however, I find myself getting very much up close and personal with my patients - if someone comes to me with a sore throat and cough I need to know what their tonsils look like, whether they are pus-ridden, what their breath smells like. I need...

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One of the advantages of working in an Urgent care centre, rather than on the road (only one, there are many other advantages), is that you should be able to get off on time. Unlike the ambulance service, you choose when to see patients (although you do try to see them as quickly as possible), so if you have only three minutes to go until the end of your shift you just don't call in a patient - instead you tidy the room, fill out a bit of paperwork, or make sure that your hands are spotlessly clean for going home.

Of course, while this is true, sometimes the real world has something to say on this and things go a bit wrong.

For example - if I have twenty minutes to go, I can call in that abdominal pain patient knowing that I should be able to finish assessing, treating and writing up the notes. Where it goes wrong is when the patient gets fifteen minutes into the consultation before springing a horrible surprise on me - such as the real reason why they are in my room is because they took an overdose of tablet 'x', they just haven't told anyone else....

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I don't think that I've properly explained exactly what my new role is. In part because, much like my old job, what initially seems quite simple (For ambulance work - go to a sick person, pick them up and take them to hospital, try not to let them die) is actually fairly complicated.

I currently work in a hospital building, tucked just behind the A&E department (sorry 'E.D'.) while the entirety of the hospital is funded by one structure, the Urgent Care Centre (or UCC) where I work is funded by another completely different group (it gets even more complicated as this group is about to merge with another group...)

The short version of what I do as a NP (nurse practitioner) is I see patients with minor injuries and illnesses, and then I make them better.

This is massively simplified.

There are two main roles in my new post - 'triage' and 'working in the back'. When I triage (which lasts for around four hours of my shift), along with an ED nurse, I see patients as they enter the hospital and book in at the ED reception. Sometimes they want to...

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I haven't blogged in over a month? Really?

It's strange really back in the day I could write three or four posts a day, saving them for later, and yet during this month I've only occasionally thought of blogging.

There are, to be honest, a couple of reasons why I've not been blogging.

• My new job. I'm enjoying myself. Well... 'enjoy' is perhaps too strong a word, after all I am still working in the NHS. However it seems that a fair chunk of the reasons for my writing (in the past year or so at least) was anger. Anger at the system, anger at inconsiderate patients, anger at watching the ambulance service circling the drain. With my new job I'm a lot less angry. For one, I'm not swearing as much - which is good because I don't think that the ambulance messroom language would go down too well with some of my new colleagues. But with that lack of rage I've been less likely to have a burning need to write something. I've noticed that I've been avoiding watching any TV news because it would get me angry and I would not...
  
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