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Mathew Westhorpe.net

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Healthcare

All posts relating to healthcare.

Broken Paramedic

The Least Worst Decisions

When I started blogging about healthcare issues over a decade ago, my motivation was to shine a light on the failings I had witnessed in over a decade working for an NHS ambulance trust. I managed that and was grateful for the opportunities it gave me to raise the alarm Read more…

By Mathew James Westhorpe, 2 months25/01/2023 ago
Healthcare

The Half-Life of Long Covid

It’s been nearly six months since I tested positive to COVID-19. I am still ill. I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with my inability to shake it off, and equally with the understandable misconceptions many people have about the condition, so I have written this account both as a personal record and Read more…

By Mathew James Westhorpe, 2 years23/06/2021 ago
Lifestyle

Michael’s Guide to Unplugged Gaming, Coping with Isolation, and the Zombie Apocalypse

Michael was my nephew. He was 15 when he died last year after six years of illness, treatment, and isolation. So when it comes to coping strategies for medical incarceration, he was a pro. Even before he was ill, we always enjoyed playing games together. I wish he was here Read more…

By Mathew James Westhorpe, 3 years20/03/2020 ago
Lifestyle

Death, Life, & Video Games: A Documentary, a Podcast, and the Conversation to Come

When my nephew died last year, a few weeks after his fifteenth birthday, the resulting emotional storm of torment, frustration and regret was impossible to process.  Oddly, like a storm, there was a strange peace to be found at the centre of it all.  For me, it was having purpose Read more…

By Mathew James Westhorpe, 3 years09/02/2020 ago
Lifestyle

The Blogging Paradox (or Why I Stopped Blogging and Why I’m Starting Again)

Internet culture is a fascinating, terrifying, distorted reflection of human behaviour. Social media is a House of Mirrors which warps context, subverts emphasis and provokes opinion. I’ve learned from experience that emotionally investing in online interactions is a hazardous pastime which can lead to dark places. It can also be Read more…

By Mathew James Westhorpe, 3 years13/01/2020 ago
Healthcare

Guilt Keeps Me in the NHS

My compulsion to stay working within the NHS is largely driven by guilt. As a healthcare professional, nothing I have experienced in the last decade under a Conservative government gives me much hope that things are going to improve in urgent and emergency care any time soon, but I can’t Read more…

By Mathew James Westhorpe, 3 years17/12/2019 ago
Broken Paramedic

Coping

I thought being a paramedic would help me cope with my parents’ deaths. Or even prevent them. I was wrong. Allow me to explain. When I first applied to Beds & Herts Ambulance & Paramedic Service in 2000, it was a partly a decision borne of a kind of naive, Read more…

By Mathew James Westhorpe, 4 years29/04/2019 ago
Broken Paramedic

Who Cares for the Carers?

Last week, I was invited to speak at the NHS Pathways National Partnership Forum, a gathering of 111 providers, clinical commissioning group representatives, technicians and policy-makers who are focused on improving the telephone assessment service. I took the opportunity to offer some insight into the ‘view from the trenches’ in Read more…

By Mathew Westhorpe, 7 years27/07/2016 ago
Broken Paramedic

Dear Ambulance Staff: Six 111 Myths and Misconceptions

Dear frontline ambulance colleagues, After 12 years of responding to 999 calls and subsequently watching from the sidelines as family and friends continue to do so, I am only too aware of the ever increasing pressures and the ongoing erosion of the ambulance clinicians’ lot. Poor staff support from within Read more…

By Mathew Westhorpe, 7 years19/02/2016 ago
Broken Paramedic

Does NHS 111 Work?

NHS 111 services sit in the eye of a nationwide healthcare storm. Amidst a chaotic vortex of hospitals in special measures, funding and resource concerns, escalating demand, demoralised healthcare staff and belligerent health ministers, the public continues to need treatment – and it is to the 24/7 medical helpline to Read more…

By Mathew Westhorpe, 7 years06/12/2015 ago

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