2012........Whistling to a new tune

                        
                    
Well…as castings go, a few questionable appointments have been immortalised on film:

Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther

Nicole Kidman as a brain surgeon in Days of Thunder

Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in The World is not Enough

Colin Farrell as in Alexander the Great in Alexander

Now, the casting of hard man Vinnie Jones in the British Heart Foundation campaign for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, supported by the Resuscitation Council, could have been another mistake on celluloid but its not.

Whoever risked their skin to put Vinnie Jones as the front man for the “ Hard and Fast” bystander or Joe public "Hands only" TV CPR campaign has scored a complete coup. Jones is brilliant. The TV advert is brilliant – from the sliding of the body, the bouncers swaying in the background, the placing the hands on the “Sovereign” is priceless imagery...."visual gold" if you like. All the way to the final stare, it is genius.

The campaign is spot on but it’s a shame that it is being chopped up in terms of time depending what TV channel you watch it on. I have heard some criticism of the new tune this week when out and about … “Stayin Alive is too fast”  “…it's to bouncy”, “.. it’s too high” . Come on it is the Bee Gees, you are not meant to sing or dance to it...not here.

Those of us more used to teaching cardiopulmonary resuscitation to small groups are more traditionally used to embarrassing ourselves by asking the audience “Nelly the Elephant or the Archers theme tune…do you know it? Can you hum it?”  Its 2012, We need to whistle to a new tune now. Stayin Alive is corny but at least the intro is better! Come on, it was even on the BBC’s Sherlock final episode last night....there is public service for you. The appeal of music in CPR has been around for a years though. Basically anything over 100 beats per minute is fine but Stayin Alive seems cool.

It’s the science bit that won’t get through with the TV campaign though…how can they in just a few minutes between a Tesco and WH Smith advert?  We inhale [need] 21% Oxygen from the air and exhale 17% Oxygen as well as waste gases – hence the need for a quick 999 call to ensure that help comes without much delay as higher concentrations of oxygen are needed as mouth to mouth resuscitation is helpful but cannot deliver nearly enough oxygen. We know through common sense and guidance from the Resuscitation Council that the almost endless distance of arteries within our adult bodies will still retain some oxygen for a short time if the heart ceases…we just need to pump it round, albeit without much delay.

[Best practice and guidance does change for children and victims of drowning however]

The Hard and Fast motto [whoever thought of the knuckle tattoo is still dining out on that]  will hopefully stop any wasted time. Shout help and get on with it.

Get yourself on a CPR course and start whistling.....

Dave

Happy New Year to all.

Well, as we kick of 2012, it is good to see that political leaders still have the NHS as a spinning plate.  All hail the recent visit by Dave to Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust where valuable light was shed on the innovative leadership being demonstrated across the hospital as part of the NHS Institute Time to Care and Productive Ward initiative - good old fashioned ground-up change with common sense at its heart. 

Dave really knows a good thing when he sees it.  The introduction of walking the floor style of leadership inspired by Salford Royal's Chief Executive David Dalton  appears to have made some dramatic effects on important patient safety statistics as well as the patient experience. It's not rocket science but “drop in visits” or lurking around long corridors (even the lovely PFI funded ones at Salford Royal) could be perceived as having sinister or punitive connotations but spare a thought, it might just be persuasion.

Allow me to just straighten my rose tinted spectacles, but I remember with great pride as a student nurse (adult) being shown how to straighten bed wheels and align curtains: this wasn’t to make Stirling Royal Infirmary just look nice, it was to allow the ward domestic a free passage or route to properly clean below and behind beds. As a post-registration student nurse (paediatrics) at the Sick Childrens Hospital in Edinburgh you needed to stand when a Nursing officer entered the room or ward, not on ceremony but as a matter of respect – you were about to whisk them round without a pen or scribbled note to explain who was in your ward and report their status.

Ministers have introduced great plans to ‘reset’ Britain’s approach to caring for patients. This reform will include as “common practice” a Matron, Sister or Team Leader on every ward. Come on Dave, we have all of them already – everywhere. What is lacking is not the titles, but the numbers…on the ground. As part of the discussion forum in a recent Guardian article discussing the pending “radical shake up", blogger "schrodingerscat85" has issues with Dave’s ideas and, well, just makes great sense:

"I am a qualified nurse working on an oncology and palliative care ward, and I think this is ridiculous. What do they think we do if we are not making sure our patients are comfortable? Every time I see one of my patients, whether it is whilst administering medication, assisting with a wash, helping them to the toilet, or just going in to a bay to get something, I am talking to them. We do not need prescribed hourly 'rounds' to do this.

In any case, I do not know how this would work. It takes at least 90 minutes to complete a morning medication 'round', then making up intravenous medications. After this, I will catch up with my HCA to make sure all our patients are washed and comfortable. By this time, patients may be being discharged (paperwork, phonecalls, chasing up other services- 'discharge facilitators' who sorted all this out for us were recently made redundant) and family arrive on the ward, often wanting to discuss their relatives progress. Whilst this is going on, people are requesting pain relief (generally controlled drugs, two qualified nurses to administer), become acutely unwell, die, need tracheostomy care, need dressings changed, need the toilet etc etc. If we stop every hour to do a 'round' then patient care will be affected negatively- how will people get medication, pain relief, blood transfusions etc in a timely manner if we are spending our time on this guff? This will only be another piece of paper to sign and file, and then be audited.

In addition to this, all wards have a senior sister / ward manager / team leader who manages the team and oversees standards and care on the ward. This has been the case for as long as I can remember, so I don't know what Dave is talking about. "

We better be careful what we wish for. We need a balance, some synergy if you will. Former Matron Hazel Halter offers us an insight into an era we will never have again in terms of hard graft and respect. However Modern Matron Hilary Loftus  [He is real isn't he?] offers us an insight into the perils of taking the training manual to bed.

Have a good shift “schrodingerscat85”