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