All posts originally published on the Broken Paramedic blog.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Chloe Smith (Con), Norman Lamb (Lib Dem) and Daniel Zeichner (Lab) accept the petition from Fraer Stevenson Earlier this week, a group of East of England ambulance staff travelled to Westminster to deliver a petition appealing for better working conditions for road staff and to retain the services of the Read more…
In a country of beleaguered ambulance Trusts facing staffing shortages, pay freezes and dwindling resources, things are looking bleak right now for employees and the public alike. But there is a glimmer of hope. After a desperate few years, East of England Ambulance Service has been experiencing the beginnings of Read more…
My thoughts on and reasons for attending the protest against the current government ideology can be read in my previous post, but as I spent much of my time taking snaps of the assembled masses (until my battery died), I thought I’d share some here. As I exited Bank tube Read more…
I maintain this blog because I feel strongly that ambulance clinicians are increasingly being mistreated and taken for granted by the organisations they work for, by the public and ultimately by the government. The intolerable impact of of this growing disregard is heartbreaking to witness as we ever more frequently Read more…