And the next day was worse.

The clients today, for really they can't be described as patients undid all of the first days good.

Highlight of this shift!

Introducing my partner to a very unusual client.
This person is well known around the traps and has a history of playing with,,,'brown enemy' even to the point of flinging it at officers.
He was compliant today with directions to keep his hands in sight but when he gets nasty I have had him handcuffed to stop the threat.

It was cruel to take any pleasure from this meeting of someone my partner thought was just a beat up ol' war story.

And that little sick post was the highlight of the shift.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Only seven actual jobs today,

Female - Chronic Pancreatitis, from the most common cause and she wont give it up or change her life to stop or decrease the pain and abuses you for doing your job and the whole health system for her chronic condition!!!!

Male -Dehydrated, poor ol' fella in a aged care place, with Parkinson's, reminded me of my Pop.

SPC haematuria for four days?

Male - Unconscious, unable to find.

Male - someone thought he might be septic, so call an ambulance without any proof and really a normal looking person.

CA patient off for some respite.

Urinary retention for the last one of the day.

A couple of waits here and there for a bed to become available in the A&E.
A nice easy day.
With mostly nice people.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

New refrigerator!

Our refrigerator is Tracy's twenty year old one and has been showing signs of it's age for the last year or so. I offered to get a new one as a Christmas present for us both (practical guy that I am!) but she doesn't remember me making that offer.

Well got two lots of overtime this weekend so I told her to go ahead and get one.

It can't be too big because the semi that we live in doesn't have good access and there isn't even room for it in the kitchen so it lives in the third bedroom which in fact is my study.

Didn't do any memorable jobs, just suburban sick people mostly with chronic conditions that really could have been treated by their own doctor (if they in deed have one). Pretty much the same that happens all over the world if you read blogs from ambos overseas.

Bread and butter stuff.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Strike? what strike?

Sorry!

I forgot that I do have readers who aren't in the Ambulance Service of NSW.

Through our Union the ambos here in my state are attempting to gain a professional pay claim to recognise the substantial increase in the pharmacology, procedure and responsibility that is now just expected of the fully qualified Paramedic Officer here.

These increases have been slowly foisted upon the members and we just kept accepting them. Out of the twenty seven everyday pharmacology's used by the ASNSW (not the trial drugs for STEMI re-prefusion) I use twenty one of them but have not received any pay increase for these higher duties.

There are also matters about rostering, shift length, the removal of penalty rates that the city ambos get when we don't get to stop and eat uninterrupted because there are not enough ambos to cover the work load. Lastly there is also the issue of Ambulance Rescue being disbanded in the metropolitan regions and those duties given to the Fire Brigade or the Police Rescue units.

So the Ambulance membership of the union voted and decided that although the government regulator, the I.R.C. had given directions to both parties, that delays, and changes to the original changes without consultation from Management with the ambos was all just attempts to weaken our resolve and therefore we would strike!

That is not to say we would walk off the job, we would take the following actions;


Time critical 1a through to 2b cases only to be done.
Hospital to hospital transfers (low acuity to higher acuity care for patients benefit)
At the same time there will be paperwork bans in place.
This means NO debtor details are to be recorded. No patient names or addresses, simply record the treatment afforded the patient, and NOTHING else.
As a result of the paperwork bans this also includes car stats and any other electronically transmitted documentation.
Officers are requested NOT to use the OFF STRETCHER buttons on MDT’s, but to simply call clear at the completion of your case (after you've written all your paperwork up).
HSU will be asking PTO’s (Patient Transport Officers's) to assist Paramedics in their action by only transporting patients to hospital and not from hospital.

The day before the planned action Management placed a dispute with the I.R.C.

The IRC took the unprecedented steps of moving straight to orders (the severest finding against a union).

These orders were quite broad, restrictive and enforceable. For members knowledge the potential impact of ignoring such orders include;
Variance to our award, removal/variance to our current pay rates, cancelled registration of our Union, the imposition of financial penalties up to $10,000.00 for the first day and an additional $5,000.00 per day that such contravention continues.
Further, any person (member) may have been found to be in contempt of the Commission, which can result in a penalty of $5,500.00 and/or 6 months imprisonment.
(I have just copied from my union update email to make sure I have the facts right, I mean it's all a record of fact with the I.R.C. transcripts anyway).

Now the ambos are a very small part of the overall membership of the HSU and if they were to get de-registered who would represent them????

So I think I have got it right mostly,
Where do we go from here?
It's still in the air right now, ambos are pissed off and some are really militant.
Nobody becomes an ambo to get rich but you do have to live.


Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

What a busy two nights.

And I'm not just referring to the work load.

Late notice of strike action,
The it's ordered off by the Government Industrial bully Relations Commission,
Then the bitching and whinges start,

And in amongst all of this we're out there serving the public.

I don't think that I have ever had as many 'Non Patient Incidents' or 'Refused Transports'. 10 jobs with 3 transports on the first night. On the final night we nearly managed to not put a single patient on the stretcher, nearly.
All in all no big or challenging jobs but definitely more than I've been getting.


Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Better work.

A couple of very sick elderly persons.
The normal nursing home poor care stuff, Hot, Coughing and Drowsy.

Two very likely chest pains. Both from a different Doctors Surgery and both getting active treatment from the Dr until we arrived.

The level of care shown to some patients with chest pain is below par at all too many surgeries. We arrive to find the patient sitting in the waiting room with other patients, No aspirin, No oxygen, No gtn, No supervision, a letter scratched by a blind chook.

So when we find a good Dr we make sure that we tell them and reinforce to the patient that they have a very special doctor.


Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First job of the day was a really good wrist fracture and that was it.

Nana jobs for the rest of the day and it fast turned into a Mad Monday with all hospitals getting flogged.

Lest see what tomorrow holds.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Cultural Advertisment.

Tracy and I have just returned from the movies.
We saw Clint Eastwood's new movie Gran Torino.
Well worth a look, we laughed and watched a wonderful study of cultural diversity developing.
We were sad with the ending and we thought it a strong indicator of the power of this movie that with the end credits most of the audience stayed seated.

It's your choice but we enjoyed it

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Blood Test came back Negative.

Such is life.

Tracy and I are very disappointed.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

A very quiet first night with more refused transports than anything and then we missed out of the really big job of the shift that made it into the papers about the Navy diver attacked by a shark in Sydney Harbour.

Second night brought more work two notables being a very disturbed Mental Health patient with extreme paranoia, delusions and mania.

We also had a very lovely elderly lady who took a tumble and did a hell of a job on her humorous. The elbow was pointing towards her ear. I had to force analgesia on her because she didn't want to be a fuss. You've got a luv 'em.

Had the pleasure of another group of attendees for another lecture from the Ambulance about Road Traffic Trauma for the Traffic Offenders Intervention Program again with six or so coming up and thanking me or sharing their experiences.

We have a blood test tomorrow for the IVF????? We'll see what happens there.

And Mum leaves us tomorrow to travel up the coast to visit one of Dad's sisters.

The bush fires are still burning down south in Victoria and the northern state of Queensland is flooded but here in New South Wales we are having very normal weather.

I'll wrap up this post with a picture of a visitor I saw on station last night, a baby possum.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

I did get to watch Mum at the Dragon Boat races and she was very pleased to have me there in uniform and my big Ambulance.

That afternoon we were busy as and managed to finish on penalty rates due to having no lunch break.

No interesting work all very run of the mill.

Got a reply from my phone company too, all the contacts and calender info is lost. I have been going around fellow staff and getting numbers but if you don't see me and think that I would like you number drop me a note on taztheambo@gmail.com .

Mums arrived now at our place,
the Dell man didn't come today,
the work roster has me missing out on working Mardi Gras night.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Big Last Day Off.

Well I seem to have my Dell back to how it was and have found a lot of my contacts but sadly are still missing the calender items, looks like their gone for good.

Thank you Dragonfly for your comment but even MACs get glitches so this is just a reminder to me to back up such data.

My Mum rang this morning, as I have posted she is in Sydney this weekend to compete with her Breast Cancer Survivors Dragon Boat crew at Darling Harbour tomorrow.

Part of their trip usually involves doing a show at one of the theatres here and they were going to Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story and had a spare ticket, would I like to go?

Tracy and I have been many times to take in musicals such as Dusty - The Dusty Springfield Story, Priscilla - Queen of the Desert and JOK - The Johnny O'Keefe Story. So I took up the offer and spent the afternoon with Mum singing a whole lot of Buddy Holly songs.

I had a great time and so did she.

Tonight Tracy and I were to attend a friend of hers Sixtieth birthday.

Well it turned into a wedding with her long time (Thirty Seven years) partner which nobody knew about. We were very honoured to have been invited to such a momentous and significant event.

Congrats Sue and Bob.

So with a heavy belly of food and wedding cake I'm off to bed.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Bloody Computer.

The graphics card or driver or something has decided to play up so after attempting to correct the fault myself with the directions on the DELL site and it not getting fixed I gave them a ring.

Four and a half hours combined telephone time (on their toll-free number).
Four different people with accents trying to be Aussie.
I have wiped the system clean, saved as much as I could but lost all my phone contacts and calender from Outlook.

It's still Fu&^%d.

So a real tech is coming over to home Monday or Tuesday.

The problem, it won't play DVD's

Now on the lucky side, I still have the old laptop and although I dumped a lot of the programs outlook is still running all be it with no new contacts since Aug 07.

I'm waiting on a reply to an email to the phone support dudes to see if the phone might have something like a rollback function to retrieve the newer contacts???
With my luck these days off, not a chance.

I worked last night and although the work was poor and I did nap for an hour or so I have been up and either on the phone or trying to fix this shit of a thing since I got home so I'm either going to crash big time later or work through the night heading for forty eight hours!!!!!!!!

That would be impressive for and Ol' Fart like me.


Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Lucked out on the work on night shift.

The most interesting case for the two nights was one I didn't treat.
A Mental Health Patient.

We were hearing about stigmata, religious delusions, political conspiracy, time travel and many other disturbing things.

Straight to the rubber room with a schedule from me just in case the medico's missed the juicy stuff.

And that was it.

Had a sleep during the day and then did a presentation at a PCYC for the Traffic Offenders Intervention Program. I had five or six of the attendees come up and talk to me about their experiences and what they had gotten from my presentation, really good for the soul.

So what's coming up?
My Mum arrives in two days for the Dragon Boat Racing on Darling Harbour as part of the Chinese New Year festivities.
Mum paddles with a Dragons Abreast team from Tassie. She's a breast cancer survivor.

The racing is on Sunday, my first day shift so I hope to be able to ask comms if I can hangout around there, work allowing.

It's reportedly going to be a stinker of a day with high 30's so an Ambulance down there might prove to be a good thing?????



Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz

Despite the heat!

It's been a bit quiet and today followed until the end of the day.

Having calmed and settled a hyperventilater up at Bondi Beach the partner and I are heading back to station to change over to a night crew when an MVA is given to a single responder at an address not that far behind us.

I pick up the mic and ask if we can assist from our current location (he shrugs his shoulders, no knocking off on time today) and around we go back towards Bondi.

Numerous calls are coming in for the job and while not all being the same address exactly their all close and describing the same accident.

A car going down a hill, swerves and clips a tree and launches itself through a steel pole hand rail and over and down a retaining wall (2.2 odd meters high) rolling and landing on the drivers side.

No passenger, driver somehow self extricated, spinal precautions, several minor glass cuts, pop in a line (pleased with that, a portly Asiatic patient not known to have very easy veins to find) a little antiemetic just to be safe and a few really good photo's to show the doctors. They always find it easier with a photo to believe us when we start telling them what, where and how of the car prangs.


Be careful out there and I'll see you at the Big One.

Taz