A&E Waiting Times

Just a brief one.

I’ve just watched a video about paramedics/A&E support having to wait for hours outside A&E departments to handover (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25298066). The lady from the NHS was talking about pumping more money into the NHS – good idea – but putting it into the ambulance service to prevent the waits. To me, the obvious primary limiting factor is A&E capacity, and one  solution (rather than changing the mindsets of people calling 999 unnecessarily) would be to increase the capacity of A&E departments, both numbers of staff and space, rather than increasing the queue of ambulances. By decreasing waiting times outside A&E, ambulances would spend more time on the road anyway.

Last week of term!

Interesting term thus far.

The actual hour by hour plan hasn’t really been stuck to so far, but that’s only to be expected I guess. However, my two pieces of coursework submitted so far this year have received a 70 and a 75 which I’m very happy with…achieving a c.64/5 this year is seeming more and more likely!

Work is fun. I had a shift last week where a young woman was in a mosh pit and fainted, she had been standing among a lot of (weed) smokers which was probably the reason for spO2 of 88. I told the trainee paramedic with me this girl’s sats, and she (the trainee para) screamed them back at me with a worried face. You do not do this. Cue aggravated patient and worried 20 questions from patient’s drunk friends. Patient’s spO2 returned to normal within 5 minutes.

A couple of weeks ago I was working on a Friday and then a Saturday. On the Friday I had a guy who drank a whole bottle of cognac and his spO2 dropped to 74, very stupid thing to do, so I had to call an ambulance out, and that was fine. Also, side point, got the oxygen out, to be face with this:
The following night, I was at a different venue and was called out to a homeless man outside the front, I got to him and he said ‘I have chest pain and had a heart attack in January’, whether this was the case or he wanted a bed on a cold November night, who am I to say… 😉 Whatever though, I had to call an ambulance as he had the magic chest pain symptoms, the ambulance arrived and it was the same paramedics…I really hope there isn’t a 999 blacklist!

Choir’s Christmas concert is this week, and is only minorly stressful – should be fantastic!

Otherwise, I’ve received my two (surprisingly very) good references for my MSc, just need to write my personal statement now.

So, a good term I think.