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A colleague told me about a nan down job they went to. Granny was babysitting while mum was working nights. When they arrived they found Granny lying prone, rigours and post mortem staining indicating she had been dead around 8-12 hours. While they carried out the checks needed to recognise the patient’s life as extinct, Continue reading "08.01.2026"
Night rises early and never quite sets. When morning does come it isn’t light, but visible darkness that gathers in corners like spectral dust. Darkness bleeds from the margins of scorring systems which delineate sickness and health and oozes from cracks in the greyscale labyrinth of moral and clinical obscurity. One shift I bought a Continue reading "Endarkening"
Anaphylaxis is like suffocating in three separate ways simultaneously. A deranged immune response can lead to cardiovascular collapse, airway occlusion and bronchospasm asphyxiation. Vasodilation is a normal inflammatory immune response which increases blood flow and immune response cells to the affected area and facilitates healing. In anaphylaxis however, globalised, severe systemic vasodilation…
Sometimes with unfocused gaze you might swear you saw the resus mannikin breathe. This happens with dead people too, you see what you expect to see. Part of successfully assessing patients is training yourself not to do this, to see and notice what is actually happening but human nature connects the dots, sees faces in Continue reading "The Unheimlich Manouvre"
Despite aesthetic objections, linguistic cliches, stock, throw away phrases, can save cognitive effort. In some settings useful, in a clinical ones however, I would argue they present a danger. The mechanism that saves cognitive effort here may discourage it there. During a recent lecture on hanging, suspension trauma and orthostatic shock, drowning and secondary drowning, Continue reading "Clear…
With regards to the impact of clinical grades of attending staff on patient outcomes 27.09.2023 Dear Denis and Guardian editorial staff, I was interested to read article published on the 23rd of September regarding the proportion of ambulance patients attended to by staff other than paramedics but was disappointed by the lack consideration of patient Continue reading "In response to The Guardian…
Most analysis and reporting of corruption is made by people who, almost by definition, accept the values that foment the problem and are unable to understand it outside of that context. Firstly they are essentially reporting on fellow guests from the same dinner party cohort, worse they believe in their own competence. They think they Continue reading "24.03.2023"
During the time referred to as the pandemic years, anecdotal evidence suggest experiences of the paranormal vastly increased. Whether a manifestation of collective grief, or an exacerbation of the truth described by Shirley Jackson that “no live organism can continue to exist for long under conditions of absolute reality,” or some other as yet unexplained Continue reading "January 2023"
Perhaps the most pernicious thing about the degradation of the NHS is not the way is used to signal virtue by the cynical, applauding staff when it suits and denuding them and insulting them the next, as a former editor of The Sun yesterday did, calling us “vile shitbags who drive ambulances for a living,” Continue reading "21.12.22 Why I’m striking"
The response from the service was mercifully muted. Staff were given an option (that I didn’t see anyone take up) to wear a black armband for the duration and on the day of the funeral there was a minute long restriction of radio traffic to priority only pre-alerts for time critical patients and requests for Continue reading "27.09.22"
