Blood, Sweat & Tea, page 69 by Tom Reynolds
<< Return to Title Details & Download70
der than we needed to - and yet, throughout the day we had a great time as we laughed and joked between patients and vowed never to work together again. I said that I'd take sick leave, saying I was 'stressed' and 'Team Leader' said she would make sure I got sent to the other side of London before she worked with me again.
And so, at the end of the shift we parted, laughing at the thought that it was possible we could be repeating the experience tomorrow.
I'm looking forward to that possibility.
'Team Leader' is still on our Complex and is still a good laugh. Thankfully, I haven't had to work with her again.
Broken Ambulances
One of the main problems with the LAS at the moment is the lack of vehicles. In the past this has come to mean that there is not enough staff to man the vehicles that we have, or fill the rota to maintain safe cover over our area. Lately, however, we haven't had the vehicles physically present. At the moment, I am typing this from work and looking out the window at the fitters whose job it is to maintain the fleet in our area of London. There are 13 ambulances waiting to be fixed. There are three crews sitting on station unable to take any calls because their vehicles have broken down.
Someone has just visited us in the staff car (a nice little Corsa) and, on attempting to leave, its clutch has broken.
Today I took an ambulance from West Ham over to Poplar to replace a vehicle whose steering had broken. Two management brought over a spare vehicle from Newham for me to work on - a vehicle that had just a broken rear suspension fixed.
Let me tell you, riding on an ambulance with no suspension is an 'interesting' experience - you get thrown around and the cupboards fly open spraying bandages and other, less soft, equipment around the cabin.
This 'fixed' ambulance lasted three jobs before the suspension died again and I was bouncing around the cabin. It also stalled if you closed the choke.
So now I'm sitting on station twiddl