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New Book – Pain: An Ambulance Perspective
A new book written by East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust paramedics to help deliver high quality care for patients has been launched. But it now from Amazon UK
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Meningitis – Know the Symptoms iPhone, iPod and iPad app
Meningitis – Know the Symptoms is now available on iTunes.
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Rethinking the ambulance
An 18-month-long project has led to a full-scale mock-up of an ambulance fit for the 21st century.
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BHF Campaign: Emergency Life Support Skills in Schools
Join the fight to get every young person knowing how to save a life before they leave school. Having Emergency Life Support (ELS) skills should be as important as learning to read and write.
UK News
BMA expresses concerns over roll out of NHS helpline
Doctors’ leaders have written to the Government over “serious misgivings” about the rollout of a new number for non-emergency services. The British Medical Association (BMA) said the deadline for introducing the new 111 telephone number needs to be relaxed from its current date of April 2013. In the short-term, 111 will run alongside existing local [...]
Inspectors told of A&E ‘crisis’
Inspectors have issued a safety warning to one of the largest NHS trusts in north west England following an unannounced visit to one of its accident and emergency department where they were told staffing was at ‘crisis levels’. Even though the A&E department of the Royal Lancaster Infirmary was relatively quiet on the night of [...]
A&E should be used for ‘real emergencies’
Truro’s Royal Cornwall Hospital and and West Cornwall Hospital have been put “under pressure” by patients turning up for treatment that could be provided by their GP. There has been a “marked increase” in patients arriving with minor injuries and ailments and health bosses are now encouraging people to think twice before heading to A&E [...]
Cameron’s ‘drunk tanks’ are dangerous, say police
David Cameron’s call for inebriated people to be locked up in “drunk tanks” until they sobered up was condemned by the Police Federation last night as a dangerous gimmick. The Prime Minister used a visit to a hospital in Newcastle to promise moves to tackle the “scandal” of Britain’s drinking culture through a mixture of [...]
Teenager turned on paramedics who caught him stealing from ambulance
Paramedics have branded a Spalding teenager “disgusting” after he stole from an ambulance while they treated an elderly woman. The two-man crew was forced to pin Levi Matthews to the ground – and wait for him to be sprayed with CS gas by police – when he turned violent after being caught inside the vehicle. [...]
PFI hospital ‘turning away ambulances’
Channel 4 News learns that a flagship PFI hospital in Wakefield is turning away patients arriving in ambulances because of a lack of capacity. North of England Correspondent Morland Sanders reports. Call 999 within the Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust and where you end up may be something of a lottery. Your nearest A&E could be [...]
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World News
‘Few aware’ of European holiday 112 emergency number
Most people do not know the number to call in the event of an emergency on holiday in Europe, a survey suggests. The Foreign Office poll of more than 2,000 people in the UK found that just 14% were aware the 112 number could reach the emergency services. Some 12% thought it connected to directory [...]
Toronto paramedics rally for essential service designation
Canada – Scores of paramedics rallied outside Toronto City Hall on Tuesday demanding they be declared an essential service in the face of a potential work stoppage that would cut staffing levels by 15 per cent. More than 100 paramedics gathered at Nathan Phillips Square Tuesday morning, chanting and waving pickets as they marched in [...]
Research flags up Irish A&E blackspots
Eire – People who fall suddenly ill in rural Kerry, north Mayo, west Clare and south-west Donegal are more than an hour’s drive from a hospital A&E, new research has revealed. The healthcare blackspots have been identified on maps which flag up gaps in access to services across the island of Ireland. Among the worst [...]
Indian TB cases cant be cured
Tuberculosis which appears to be totally resistant to antibiotic treatment has been reported for the first time by Indian doctors. Concern over drug-resistant strains of TB is growing, with similar incurable TB emerging in Italy and Iran. Doctors in Mumbai said 12 patients had a “totally drug resistant” form of the infection, and three have [...]
If Tim Tebow Was a Paramedic
Medic Madness Blog – This week’s “Celebrity Medic” features an NFL star that has captured headlines, stirred up political controversy and helped send the Squealers Steelers back home to Pittsburgh last Sunday. So with all his talent, money and fame, one would imagine that he would be set in his career for a long time, right? [...]
Paramedic seriously injured in collision recovering in hospital
Canada – A paramedic injured in a crash near Souris earlier in January has been upgraded to stable condition in hospital. The crash happened on PR 250 on Jan. 5. At the time of the collision, the ambulance was transporting a patient in a non-emergency call from Melita to Brandon. Witnesses suggested it appeared the [...]
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Opinion
Give people a drinking licence, and take it away if they cause enough damage
Brian Kellett writes in the Guardian -
I’ve worked in ambulances and am sick of seeing people bingeing on alcohol without having to face consequences
David Cameron has called for “innovative solutions” to tackle the problem of alcohol in society. Having been ambulance staff, I have spent a lot of my time picking up people who had been injured or just rendered incapable due to alcohol, which means I am well-placed to talk about the evils of alcohol and certainly wouldn’t agree with Nicholas Lezard’s comments on the issue.
Dealing with vomit and violence I would take these patients to the local A&E department. Overworked and often understaffed, the nurses there would have to deal with these high-dependency patients, cleaning them up, trying to stop them urinating over the side of the trolley and dodging their flailing fists.
For every quiet drunk slumped in a public place there are three or four similarly intoxicated patients with head injuries, lacerations, or people who have made suicide attempts – not to mention those who seem to have turned up just because they want to fight with hospital staff.
While this goes on, the staff are trying to look after an older woman who fell and broke her hip, the woman having a miscarriage or the anxious, mentally ill man who all suddenly find themselves in Hogarth’s Gin Lane.
Read the full article at guardian.co.uk.
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NHS Trusts
Proposed merger of Great Western Ambulance Service is put before South Gloucestershire Council
The case for merging the region’s ambulance service to create one ‘super’ organisation across the whole South West has been put before South Gloucestershire Council. Great Western Ambulance Service (GWAS) director of nursing, Liam Williams, held a frank discussion with members of the authority’s health scrutiny select committee. He said GWAS had to make changes [...]
- North East Ambulance Service faces major reorganisation
- EEAS: We are not massaging 999 figures
- NEAS faces major reorganisation
- EEAS gets more qualified paramedics
- EMAS buys vehicles to carry obese patients
- SECAmb’s private 999 ambulances cost criticised
More in NHS Trusts
Clinical Matters
UK flu rates at all-time low
Seasonal influenza is losing its grip. The infection that has laid low millions of people every winter for generations, causing widespread deaths and wreaking havoc with the NHS and the economy, is at an all-time low. On present trends, this winter is set to register the lowest level of seasonal flu on record. Figures from [...]
- Why hi-tech mannequins are training professionals of tomorrow
- Warm drinks and Bear hugs: how to handle hypothermia
- New Book – Pain: An Ambulance Perspective
- Blood pressure ‘should be measured in both arms’
- Lung emergencies at 10 year high in Wales
- La Nina ‘may abet’ flu pandemics
More in Clinical Matters
Unions
Ambulance cuts feared by union
Plans for a number of ambulances to be taken off the road and replaced with one-man response vehicles could go ahead despite a trust failing to meet its targets over the Christmas period. Ambulance union GMB is calling “for an urgent meeting” with East of England Ambulance Trust’s EEAST chief executive, Hayden Newton, after the [...]
- GMB wants ambulance service upgraded to full emergency status
- Ambulance breaks row offer rejected by Unite members
- Ambulance ‘break’ offer rejected in GMB vote
- Pay freeze
- UNISON: House of Lords Holiday Pay Victory
- UNISON: Concerns about ambulance staff morale
More in Unions
Equipment
Dawn of the age of wireless medicine
Medical treatment is about to go wireless. New advances in microelectronics have enabled doctors to contemplate the day when they will be able to monitor and treat their patients with medical implants that use wi-fi, Bluetooth and other kinds of wireless technology. The latest development in this area is a medical implant controlled by wireless [...]
- Batteries fading on 999 calls
- Getac rugged laptop passes crash test for emergency vehicles
- Rethinking the ambulance
- TeleGuide 111 to transform NHS patient sorting
- 10 Products From EMS World Expo 2011
- Demand for bariatric ambulances ‘on the rise’
More in Equipment
Health & Safety
Company didn’t call ambulance for worker with broken neck
A trained first-aider assessed Mr Hill but did not recognise the seriousness of his injuries. Nobody called an ambulance and instead the first-aider drove Mr Hill by car to a hospital, where he was diagnosed as having suffered a broken neck and wrist. He spent six weeks in hospital and 14 weeks in halo traction. [...]
- Shift work is a health risk
- Ignorance of first aid behind health and safety concerns
- First aiders a must for all businesses
- 999 crews to lose ‘health and safety’
- What Is First Aid? What is the Recovery Position?
- Hazardous Area Response Teams
