Beware as cut-price care comes calling
TAVISTOCK citizens are a feisty bunch. They’ve driven McDonald’s out of town, and now they want to stop a Premier Inn opening up there, too.
They’re adamant about keeping the identity of their town on the edge of Dartmoor and reckon the chain hotel would devastate business.
Premier Inn says its plans would provide at least 35 jobs and bring £2.7million of business – but would that wealth stay in Tavistock, I wonder? The locals think not.
They reckon it’s one more “predator” big name that will drive B&Bs out of business and squeeze out independent traders. What’s wrong with competition, you ask? As one local put it: “What’s wrong with competition is when you put an apex predator into a chicken coop.”
I’ve nothing against Premier Inn, but it’s refreshing to see Britain’s so-called “angriest town” defend its uniqueness when so many high streets look the same.
JIM AND Joanne Bell (pensioners of Yelland – also in Devon – also feisty) have saved £15,000 by NOT turning on their central heating for the past 10 years.
They believe in braving out the chilly months by wearing lots of jumpers and anoraks and using hot water bottles. They even reckon they’ve adapted to such harsh conditions because neither of them has had a cold in all of that time and now they find other people’s houses stiflingly warm!
Me, I’m a huge fan of the hot water bottle. Prefer them to a heated blanket any night. But I’m sitting here in my living room where the snow has only just gone, I’ve got the central heating on and I’m cuddling a hot water bottle!
Meanwhile, the
Bells are off spending their well-saved dosh on rock concert tickets! To each their own!
THEY SAY that people are divided into two types when it comes to a sense of social responsibility. Those who hold back from even calling 999, or feel guilty about taking up a GP’s time, even if they’re in pain. And those who feel that if something is free to use (like the emergency services or the NHS) then it is there to be abused or misused.
We all heard about the man who called 999 when his local KFC ran out of fried chicken, and the woman who telephoned after finding a dead pigeon in her garden. She expected paramedics to come and resuscitate it.
These utterly stupid callers – including those who dial 999 for minor conditions such as colds and toothache – are putting the lives of genuine emergency patients at risk.
Imagine if one of your friends or loved ones was in need of the emergency services and they were delayed by a timewasting call. Of course, some such callers have serious mental issues, and emergency operators are nowadays trained to identify, and help them in ways other than sending out a blue light team (yet another cost to an already financially strained service).
A couple of years ago, I had a phone call from one of my sons, in the middle of the night. He couldn’t breathe, his flatmates reckoned he should call an ambulance, and he was seriously worried if he should. What did I think? he asked. Should I call 999? After one minute listening to his symptoms, and his obvious panic, I said yes, call 999 – now.
Within a few minutes the paramedics had arrived, and told me he had a spontaneous pneumothorax – a collapsed lung! I was 60 miles away. Even if I’d hopped straight in the car, it would have taken me two hours to get to him. The paramedics were with him in 15 minutes.
I felt a similar reluctance myself when, in the middle of a cosy documentary one evening, I was suddenly stricken with an abdominal pain so harsh it left me reeling. I was rolling around on the carpet in front of the TV, with a pain that wouldn’t go, even as Attenborough nattered on and I waited for pain-killers to kick in. One of my children insisted, despite me feeling guilty about making a fuss, on calling an ambulance. The paramedics came within minutes and even returned an hour later when the pain, which had subsided, became even worse. It turned out to be my gall bladder, and I was hospitalised straight away.
Most of us in the UK have similar great stories about our ambulance service: the unbelievable relief when you are told they are on their way, and then the reassuring ring on the doorbell.
And what about when you’re held up in a traffic jam on the motorway? The overhead signs say “Accident” and you wonder what has happened ahead. Then you hear the whirr of the Air Ambulance rotors and you feel immediately relieved and proud that the medics are on their way by helicopter!
Of course there are bad ambulance stories too, and I don’t mean to minimise their importance or the lessons we should learn from them. Like the recent case of a man whose 77-year-old mother was lying on her floor with a broken hip for seven hours. He travelled nearly 200 miles from Exmouth to Brixton, by public transport, to be with her and got there before the paramedics. It made me wonder whether it really is so bad that our ambulance service is increasingly using what they call care assistants rather than fully trained paramedics.
Recent headlines have dubbed them “cut-price” paramedics. And indeed, they are only meant to serve as assistants. The supposed scandal is that they are, in many cases, being sent out on their own or in pairs without a trained paramedic.
CERTAINLY, in my son’s, and in my own, case we were indeed in dire trouble and we both needed the “full works”. But, given that many 999 calls are not serious, and are sometimes time wasters, perhaps a quicker response from a less-trained person who can report back to HQ isn’t such a bad option.
Despite calls from the ambulance service for more money, funding cuts have brought austerity to it. We either learn to live with that, or cough up more dough.
We citizens also need to have a greater sense of responsibility and respect. We should indeed worry about calling 999. We really should worry about possibly wasting our GP’s time when we demand an appointment for something that could easily be cared for by the local pharmacist. And we definitely should be reprimanded or even fined if we don’t bother to turn up.
Perhaps having this wonderful NHS, free for all at the point of delivery (though paid for by all taxpayers) has bred in us a sense of complacency, a feeling that we have the right to demand some services whose cost we don’t fully understand.
Ask any A&E nurse or doctor and they’ll horrify you with stories of people who turn up rudely demanding treatment for next to nothing, screaming: “I pay your wages.”
Surely the answer to the “cut price paramedic” phenomenon is more money for more fully-trained paramedics, a proper appreciation of the invaluable support that can be given by these care assistants, and increased respect and responsibility from those of us who, in moments of pain and panic, need their precious response, and need it fast.