The news has hit the mainstream news outlets shortly after we heard about it internally.Almost nine-hundred jobs are to go at the London Ambulance Service.
Two thirds of them will be front-line.
There are tough times ahead.
Possibly tougher for our patients than for the staff, if the "natural wastage" policy is adhered to.
I just hope I'm wrong.
13 comments:
working for EMAS i hear you, we have similer thins happening here too ;-( i love my job
How the hell are they going to manage that. Are they thinking less people will become ill. Stupid. All the front line services are being cut and they shouldn't be. This government is useless!
Just wait for the stories in the media saying "2 hour wait for ambulance while I had a ..." and it will be a picture of someone looking thouroughly miserable and chavy and depressed when it turns out she wasn't in serious danger and could have probably walked to A+E People are not going to stop calling ambulances. People are not going to stop being ill!
It's ridiculous!!!!
Cheers for the interesting blog though.
xxx
:( happening all over. I predict a rise in A&E attendances
It is ridiculous!!
I work in a control room and each year I watch the ambulance service get that little bit busier, staffing levels are already an issue and there are currently in excess of 4000 calls a day. I certainly fear for the patients as the staffing levels drop and yet performance is still expected to improve each year. It is already highly pressurised and I'm dreading the sickening feeling of watching the volume of patients rise and having less frontline line staff to attend to them!!
Rant over! Your blog is fantastic! Keep up the good work
:-)
Looking on the bright side, at least there'll be enough trucks to go round with 560 fewer of us!
IT'S MADNESS
I'm a volunteer community responder (not in area covered by L.A.S.) and these cuts seriously worry me... Put the reduced number of front-line vehicles together with increased wait times for vehicles unloading at at A&E departments (2 hours is not unheard of!!) and I am certain lives will be lost.. I can hold things together for a while but personal experience convinces me we need MORE front-line vehicles crewed with paramedics, certainly not less....
Keep on Blogging!!
well, we cost too much, what with our million-dollar salaries and our poor budgetary decisions. wait, got my facts mixed up...
I do think the government is running on a 'wing and a prayer' in regards to cutting police, nhs and school resources. They should invest in some good PR and encourage the public to educate themselves, police themselves, treat themselves and others to accommodate (very slightly) the loses. We've become a society too reliant on others to govern and help ourselves.
My heart goes out to those that will lose their jobs and put a strain on their families.
Would the last person out please switch the lights off.
We are all screwed by this. With the ever increasing call rate the only option is more cars and force them to transport. This increases the risk to both staff and patient alike. Who will look after the responder when it all goes wrong?
My daughter works in another ambo trust. She was meant to do her orientation on the RV but it was cancelled at the last minute because there wasn't a spare car (she was already there!). Training can only be done on overtime, all overtime has now been stopped.
The only chance of cover with cuts like this is with single-manned cars and hand over to transport with lesser trained taxi drivers - some of whom think they are paramedics. Then they will need more doctors to shoot out on blue lights to give pain relief if it becomes necessary underway or when the patient crashes unexpectedly - like happens here. Transport is by one group, treatment by another. Luckily we have helicopters to transfer really poorly people quickly - the mountains are a bit of a handicap! But they cost even more.
Time to join the nurses and shout loudly - it might work.
w/v gessno, gess this might work, no it won't
It does seem to be getting more and more difficult to do the job we (or at least I) love. I try, mostly succeed, but sometimes fail, to just do my job and ignore the politics surrounding it all. When I'm with a patient, all that matters is that patient. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes not, but for now, it's a question of keeping an eye on developments, and maybe, if the time is right and the politics are wrong, we'll stand up and make sure our voice is heard.
I predict the NHS is going to spiral into a breakdown. I know first hand that people who leave the service are being replaced by less experienced staff or not replaced at all.
I don't believe that the ambulance service or A&E departments or the NHS as a whole are going to sack people, but god help us if people leave, they'll just not be replaced and what we believe to be short staffed now to provide effective care will become even worse and leave us even more stressed and burnt out. Well done to the goverment for suggesting these savings, perhaps you should have suggested they start with the pointless overpaid managers on 60k+.
People making these decisions need to take a close look at the state the road crews are already in. I work up north, and I'm about to jump ship from a city ambulance to a rural car, before I burn out!
Just found your blog - excellent!
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