Kelspook

Thanks for the welcome, Jake. It seems like a pretty cool community here- been lurking for quite a while, only just started posting. To be fair, I work in a more rural area, but even so, if we think there's a threat, we request the police to meet us at the scene, and don't often have the situation that paras in Glasgow do, where there just aren't enough police to go around. Most of the time round here, the police get there before we do, as they're usually notified of assaults before we are, and they have more stations and people than we do. We don't run RRU's in my area, they're only really in the cities. They were trialed, but found to be a total waste of time and resources. What we're concerned about is that they're thinking of reintroducing them (even though it's been proven that they don't work) and that they want to replace experienced, qualified ambulance technicians with driver only grades. I guess only time will tell if they'll get away with... I'm hoping that they don't.

Dwayne, the articles aren't bashing the paramedic, they're bashing the system of single crewed responses replacing double crewed vehicles. That's the way I read it, anyway. Easterhouse is a very rough area, and Glasgow has Scotland's highest incidents of knife crime. Add to that the culture of the neds at times attacking anyone in uniform, whether they're police, fire or ambulance, and you have a situation where it's incredibly unsafe. If there's two of you, you've got backup. If you're on your own, there's nobody to watch your back. This is why we're against the RRU's- they were introduced ONLY to improve those stupid government target times. As for questioning her mettle, she finished her shift, and only went off when the court case came up and brought it all roaring back, along with the thought of having to face the boys family. We're not meant to be judgemental, we're supposed to treat everyone the same, so why shouldn't she have been feeling a lot of guilt over a 19 year old boy that because of the situation she wasn't allowed to try to save?

I work for the service in question, in a different part of Scotland, and this has been discussed a lot in our station. Our view is that is simply underlines everything that's wrong with trying to replace double crewed vehicles with single crewed RRUs (rapid response units). The official policy is that until the scene has been secured, you don't go near it if you're on your own. If you're in a double crewed vehicle, you can use your own judgement, and if possible scoop the patient up and hightail it out of there- I've done that a couple of times. It's happening all over, and there are plans afoot to take even MORE double crewed vehicles off and replace them with RRU's, along with bolstering the apparent number of vehicles by crewing a paramedic with someone who is only trained in basic first aid and emergency driving. Basically, our new chief exec seems to be totally focused on ONLY the response times, well, that and saving money. This article is commenting on that:- http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish...86908-20426678/ We're all pretty unhappy with the current state of affairs- if I'm at a job, the last thing I want is to have to spend valuable time instructing my partner in what I need them to do, as it's stressful enough with a probationer technician straight from the ambulance college, who at least knows roughly what to do. I don't want my shifts turning into a mix of calls and training my partner from scratch! This is the original article in the Daily Record:- http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish...86908-20393732/ and the Record veiw of the situation:- http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/comment/newsp...86908-20426607/ Fingers crossed that the powers that be take notice, or the politicians actually do something useful and tell them to stop hamstringing us in this way. In answer to the first post, the union would have fought tooth and nail for the paramedic in question, and I think it's extremely unlikely that she would have lost her job, as the story would have hit the papers in no time (some helpful, anonymous soul in her station would probably have seen to that) and the service couldn't have sacked her without generating acres of bad press for themselves.

This might be a bit late for you, but this is a link to the PDF version of the Scottish Ambulance service summer 2007 magazine, could be printed off and used. http://www.scottishambulance.com/docs/Resp...e_Summer_07.pdf failing that, go to the main site:- http://www.scottishambulance.com/ Hope that helps you or someone else looking for the same kind of thing.

That's certainly the logic behind the UK's National Health Service. Every working person pays National Insure contributions on top of their income tax, and the government then funds the NHS. Free to all, at point of need. So, we don't charge anything at all for normal calls- the only charges made are for things like providing crews to cover football matches and the like, and for running some courses like Health and Safety at Work First Aid courses. We do CPR classes and whatnot for school kids on a voluntary basis, so schools don't get charged. The NHS would be a great system if there was less bureaucratic nonsense, in a lot of hospitals the management, admin and support people outnumber the front-line folks, which shouldn't really be happening. I guess that's what happens when a labour government is allowed to stay in power *sigh*. That said, I really wish we could charge the time wasting morons who regularly call for us then either have bog all wrong with them or refuse to travel... Might make them think twice before picking up the phone!