For over twenty-five years I was a full time street medic.  I have been part-time now for only a few months.  I have tried to work at least 20 hours a week, but there have been a couple of weeks when I have only worked once, and one week where I did not work at all.

I sit at my desk at the hospital and watch the crews come in and listen to their stories, and i feel like a desk-jockey fan boy wishing i was still out there.  Tell me again about that call…

When I was full time I always worked at least three twelve hour shifts in a row so my weeks balanced between being a paramedic and then living a regular life.

Now that the regular life is a much larger portion of my time, I am finding two things.  I don’t look forward to going to work as much as i did and when I do, I am nervous.

This isn’t to say that I still don’t enjoy the work, and don’t for most part, still feel comfortable in the position.  It is just that I feel unbalanced.

Not having to get up at 4;30 in the morning is great.  Being always free to take my daughter to her...

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Riggs is a therapy dog.  Our ambulance service moves him about between various divisions to boost responder morale.  I met him for the first time on Friday.  They brought him out to one of the hospitals, and he came over where I sat in my fly car, and he let me take his picture.

When I was a boy I was scared to death of dogs.  I grew up in Turkey where packs of wild gypsy dogs roamed the streets.  The first word I ever spoke was “enginar,” which means artichoke in Turkish.  Gypsy women carried baskets of them on their backs, and shouted “Enginar!” hoping to entice people to buy.  I had an unusual childhood.  One of my first memories was of a dancing bear in the streets and holding a small cup of coins.  I remember fires and dancing to music, and the ever present growling dogs.

I came to America in the early 1960s when John Kennedy was still alive. I was in the Indian Guides, which was an alternative to cub scouts/boy scouts.  The theme of the Indian guides was “Like father like son, Pals forever.”  My father’s Indian name was...

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Long Haul

Next week I am having a week at home. I am not going on holiday but the break is really welcomed. The last few months have been demanding. I suspect I am not alone in feeling a little tired. I hope you are taking some time off across the summer as you deserve a break. Sadly it will not be a holiday this year for most of us.

March seems a lifetime ago. We began with huge staff absences as people self-isolated. The lockdown was keenly followed by the public and as staff came back we were very proactive during Operation Inglenook tackling drug dealers and gangs. We moved from this stage into the George Floyd related protests and some very real challenges to police legitimacy and race at a time of considerable pressure. Demands for police service started to return alongside the significant uplift in domestic abuse and harassment.

The public followed the lockdown better than any of us could have imagined. Today communities are tired of the restrictions and feeling the impact. I have always said the...

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One the COVID ACT map, Connecticut is still yellow.  It had turned orange briefly, but that was due to a statistical abnormality where old cases that had been recorded on paper back in May were added to the state totals.  

COVID ACT NOW Connecticut

The hospital where I work this week had its first COVID Free Day where no one in the hospital had COVID.  Additionally in a recent study over 600 asymptomatic employees were tested and not a single one tested positive for COVID.  

But trouble is working nearby.  To the North in Springfield, Massachusetts, at Baystate hospital, 20 staff members and 13 patients tested positive for COVID after reportedly being infected by an employee who had traveled to a hot spot and returned to work without guaranteeing or telling anyone.

Another COVID-19 cluster identified: 13 patients, 23 employees at Baystate Medical Center

  To the south in Greenwich, Connecticut on the New york border, there were 41 new cases in a week with half between 10 and 19.  And just yesterday after the state had dropped to its lowest...

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A short post, to address a question that has come to me a number of times over the years and when it recently re-emerged I ended up double-checking this was covered on the BLOG, but found I hadn’t done a specific post on it.  Such references as there were seemed a little buried within other posts could be hard be hard to find, as such, the question for us to clear up here is whether a patient who is ‘absent without leave’ (AWOL) from detention in hospital under the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA) is considered ‘unlawfully at large’ for the purposes of the police forcing entry to private premises.

A couple of points of background before I explain why the answer is “Yes – they are unlawfully at large” —

A police officer is permitted in law to force entry to a premises in a number of legal circumstances, for example, in order to arrest someone for an indictable (ie, serious) offence. If you’re a suspect for grievous bodily harm and we think you’re in your house, officers can force entry under s17 of the Police...

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