Motorbikes, cycles, and copters, oh my!

We started today with a nice chat with the senior clinical advisor (or, assistant medical director, if you will). He was quite fascinated with the intricate idiocy that American EMS can sometimes resemble. He had a hard time getting his head around the fact that there is no national system, only national curricula. Their system is so simplistic (and smart) here now, (it became really organized in 2000) that it’s hard to believe that the US doesn’t operate in the same way. It was nice to have an opportunity to talk to him and further learn about their system. Their national registry is called the British Paramedic Association and the Health Professions Council is who registers qualified paramedics. Once you have an HPC number, you can take it anywhere in the UK and get a job as a paramedic. We also learned that it would be almost ridiculously easy to transfer national registry to here. (probably easier than transferring to Virginia (but don’t tell my parents)).
I’ve also learned that I am developing an affinity for tea. I know I like two sugars, (everyone asks how many) and milk, which I had never really tried before (and I call myself an anglophile!)
After this, we learned about their Motorbike Response Unit (MRU). This is a pretty cool idea, and has been around here for about 8 years. Every paramedic on this unit trains with the police out in the country. This training must be a pretty harrowing experience because the guy we talked to said he wondered if he would die while doing it. This, just after telling us he could go 100 mph through downtown London. We got to check out what the bike carries and sit on it too, what joy!
Then we went to visit the Cycle Response Units (CRU) which is located in the car park under the building. They have nice bikes, holding about 50lbs of equipment. Fully ALS equipped, with lights, and a siren, hilarious!
We had lunch and went to the helipad at the Royal London Hospital. London? yes, Hospital? yes, Royal? not so much. It’s in a pretty dodgy end of town, and from a distance it looks like the helipad is held up with 2x4s. But, once we got up there, it was pretty cool. There is only one helicopter that services London. It’s the large red one with Virgin on the side. It carries a doctor and a paramedic, and they can do basically whatever they want to. They often not only do RSI, but administer ketamine (what we call horse tranquilizers), put in chest tubes, perform thoracostomies, episiotomies, surgical airways, and amputations. We hung out in the helicopter, they got a call, and we watched it take off. (the call turned out to not be exciting) When it got back, we took some more photos of it. The weather was perfect, so we got some beautiful shots of it with London in the background including St. Paul's and the tower of London.
We came back to our hostel area for dinner and a pint, and went to the market for some dessert. (We saw a Ford streetka, I want that car!) I think we’ll make it an early night tonight, we are both feeling a bit run down from all the walking and all the bloody steps in the tube!
Cheers-