(75) More Blood, More Sweat & Another Cup of Tea

Title: More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea by Tom Reynolds
Publisher: The Friday Project
285 pages
Genre: non-fiction

Synopsis:  What happens behind closed (ambulance) doors
Meet Tom, an Emergency Medical Technician for the London Ambulance service. It is Tom who shows up to pick up the drunk tramp, the heart attack victim and the pregnant woman who wants to go to hospital in an ambulance because she doesn't want to call a taxi. Tom is also a man who rails against the unfairness of it all, who bemoans the state of the NHS and who ridicules the targets that state that if the ambulance arrives within eight minutes and the patient dies it is a success and if the ambulance arrives in nine minutes and the patient's life is saved it is a fail.

 Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of the emergency services. From the tragic to the hilarious, from the heart-warming to the terrifying, Blood, Sweat and Tea 2 is packed with fascinating anecdotes that veer from tragic to hilarious; heart-warming to terrifying and Tom deftly leads the reader through a roller coaster of emotion.

In the brilliant and bestselling Blood Sweat and Tea Tom gives a fascinating – and at times alarming – picture of life in inner-city Britain and the people who are paid to mop up after it.

Captures the thrills, heartbreak and frustrations of medicine in a way that resonates with readers around the world.

Review: Stories from his blog, Tom writes about his experiences working on an ambulance in London. He isn't too keen on General Practitioners (GP's) or those who don't seem to care about their patients after they have called the ambulance and his mood doesn't improve when he gets called to help people who are just too lazy to call for a cab.  He is not thrilled with the state of the system he works within and believes (and I have to agree) that those who use the ambulance as a taxi service should have to pay instead of the taxpayers whose money supports the ambulance service. It sounds like he is very down on his job but its exactly the opposite.  I think he loves what he does, and believes that the people deserve more.  Ambulances that don't show up for way too long because there aren't enough, or are out on bogus calls, and equipment that just isn't available and should be are some of the things he hopes to remedy.  Maybe the government should read his book and take a look at their system.

Often written as humorous anecdotes, Reynolds short snippets inside the life of an ambulance worker are inspiring as well as sad.