Blood, Sweat and Tea

I have recently purchased the compendium of Tom Reynold's excellent blog, "Random Acts of Reality". It is called "Blood, Sweat and Tea", and follows Tom's working life as an Emergency Medical Technician for the London Ambulance Service.

Tom's most recent post on his blog covers a really crucial issue - are there enough ambulances, and ambulance staff to go around? More to the point, is there any foundation to the lurid newspaper headlines, which suggest that people are dying because ambulance staff are being allowed lunch breaks?

I get very annoyed when I read this - I fully agree with Tom's point that the best way to reduce the burden on our emergency services is to teach them what is, and is not, appropriate for a 999 call. For instance, I felt justified in calling the police when a man started to climb through my bedroom window in the middle of the night (luckily he ran off and we were unharmed). However, it is perhaps less justifiable to call an ambulance for a cold, or for an injury sustained a couple of days ago (both of which are bugbears for Tom).

Anyway, the link to the blog has been on the right hand side of this page for some time now, and the book is available at a cheap price from Amazon.