These strikes....

I can take being called a moron as I have been called worse, but a Tory that's really crossed the line. I have mentioned numerous times being politically homeless as they are all useless. Best to vote for an independent.

 

Yes, we've got to pay the wifes out of our Christmas wages.

 

I had to do it for years as a teacher until they scrapped it as it provided no value whatsoever.

 

I’m getting really ****** off with the Tory rags having headlines saying things like if someone dies because of the strike then it’s the striking paramedics to blame. They were incredulous on Sky News when reviewing the papers the other night that people having heart attacks might not even get an ambulance. Have they got their heads up their arses?!? What do they think is happening at the moment? Why do they think NHS workers are striking? Yes, 12 years of real term pay cuts is one of the things, but it’s the conditions most of all.

A few weeks ago a good mate of mine had a heart attack. He was at home, alone and knew he was having a heart attack. He’s a charge nurse in A&E and still works in the department I left in 1997. He told the person when he rang 999 that he was having a heart attack. She told him there were no ambulances. He therefore had to walk 10 minutes, had a 20 minute tube journey and another 15 minute walk. When he got to A&E they sat him down, did an ECG, confirmed that yes indeed, he had had a heart attack and wouldn’t let him walk the 20 paces of so into resus. Thankfully, he’s okay now.

The other day another close mate was sat at home when he suddenly had an almighty headache, like a vice crushing his head. His wife rang 111 who said to call 999 and get an ambulance immediately. She did. There were no ambulances available. She rang an Uber. An Uber driver drove a bloke having a brain haemorrhage to A&E. The doctors and nurses in A&E were excellent. It’s the same A&E my mate went to/works in. They decided he needed to be transferred to the Neuro hospital in Bloomsbury ASAP. ASAP turned out to be 2 hours 40 minutes, before an ambulance was free. Again, he’s still in a great deal of pain, but it looks like he’s going to be okay.

And the Daily Mail say that if someone has a heart attack or brain haemorrhage or something, can’t get an ambulance and dies, it’s the fault of the striking paramedics. Like **** it is. It’s a result of three things - 12 years of chronic underfunding, low wages and Brexit. Brexit has seen a lot of European NHS staff leave and none come the other way, but more importantly it has caused major staffing problems in social care. The knock on effect of this is that hospitals are full of people who don’t need to be there, but cannot be discharged. This in turn leads to A&Es having cubicles blocked with patients that are there for up to a few days waiting to be admitted. And this means that ambulances cannot offload their patients, so we have ambulances acting as cubicles and paramedics acting as nurses, something their are neither trained for nor want to be. Paramedics are spending their shift looking after someone in a queue outside A&E, being relieved by another crew at the end of their shift, and then coming back the next day to relieve the crew that relieved them. We have doctors assessing patients, treatment being carried out and patients being discharged from ambulances. Beggars belief doesn’t it. And the final knock on effect of this is that all the ambulances are stuck in a queue outside A&E departments, so patients having heart attacks and brain haemorrhages are having to get tubes and Ubers to get their sometimes life saving treatment. And what is the government doing about it? We know what the Tory press is doing about it - pretending it isn’t happening.

As an aside, when the ambulance drivers last went on strike 30 years or so ago, the death rate went down. The army, fire brigade and St John Ambulance covered for them. The ambulance drivers/paramedics were nowhere near as well trained back then though, and the care homes were fully staffed. The lower death rate was the difference between ‘scoop and run’ and ‘stay and play’. The ambulance drivers were just starting to have their roles expanded, so they were starting to put lines into patients, intubate them, etc. They weren’t all necessarily that good at it though, so the delay in getting these patients into A&E was often counterproductive. The army/fire brigade/St John staff would instead just deal with the immediately life threatening issues, like putting pressure on any bleeding or giving mouth to mouth, whilst getting everyone to hospital ASAP. It will be different nowadays though, because paramedics are much better trained and way more competent.

 

Ha, don't get me started on that as well. Same for midwives!

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11565729/How-ambulances-stuck-outside-hospital.html

Interesting interactive tool showing ambulance call outs in the week to the 18th. Barnsley hospital was really poor at getting to callouts within half an hour. Calderdale and Huddersfield were around four times better at doing so.

 

A lot of ambulances go to Barnsley from the Huddersfield area

 

Makes perfect sense as long as it is a HD8 postcode like Denby Dale and Cumberworth as it isn't much further mileage wise but way faster from a scenic route with far fewer traffic.

 

Unless that patient requires services from the LA or Mental Heath then they end up being admitted to Barnsley for days