Was it going too fast? I guess we'll find out, eventually.
Imagine how terrifying it must have been. Packed in like sardines. Just enough room to hang on with one hand and flick through Facebook and Twitter with the other.
Suddenly your world is on its side. People are piled on top of you. The back of a seat has busted your ribcage, the weight of ten people pressing down on you. The lights go out... people scream. You feel a trickle of warm on your face. The woman squashed against you is bleeding.
There is an eire silence... then all hell breaks lose. Someone calls '999'. Then another and another and suddenly the ambulance control centre is inundated with screaming people. 'There's been a crash... come now...'
At first no one knew what was happening but eventually the emergency services were in a well rehearsed full swing. Croydon University Hosptial was put on alert... a major incident.
Their A&E is undergoing a refurb and they are working from smaller temporary accommodation. They needed more staff. Doctors, porters, nurses, catering, imaging, AHPs, every one including the Chaplain.
A coach-load of injured turned up, ambulances by the score and the walking wounded somehow got themselves there... courtesy strangers in cars.
Getting staff to come into hospital for an emergency is a job for the hospital departmental secretaries, on the phone. It can takes ages...
WhatsApp is a texting service between mobile phones as a replacement for the regular text messages. ... WhatsApp uses an internet connection between phones. You can set up groups, talk privately and it's free. Hosptial docs use it all the time.
WhatsApp may have saved the day at Croydon. Technology in action.
I shouldn't be telling you this... many hospital doctors regard NHS tech as a joke. They've been using text to talk and advise each other for years. Google translate is very handy and FaceTime is a boon. WhatsApp... routine. The junior doc's strike was organised usinf Twitter and What's App.
I wonder when NHS IT, digital, computing or whatever it's called these days are going to wake up.
I spoke to a mum the other day. Two wriggling kids under five. Does she bother with making a GP appointment when she needs a bit of help with a rash or a runny nose or worse? No. The family have a surprisingly cheap App on their phone that connects them, via FaceTime, directly with a GP.
'Try and ring the surgery between 0827hrs and 0831hrs, beg for an appointment in three weeks... no thanks.' Ouch.
Wrestle a clunky web-site and try to book something on line... yer 'avin a larf. Families will by-pass primary care.
Junior doctors are bypassing NHS IT, parents are moving on.
Whilst the NHS struggles to get out of the gas lamp era the rest of us live in a world of digital and LEDs.
Some hospitals are still working wth paper records, some outpatient appointments are still done face to face when a third of them could be done over FaceTime or Skype. NHS England IT brigade with its road maps and assessments. For goodness sake... you are being left behind.
People, staff, patients and doctors are creating their own solutions and are way ahead. NHS IT in the theoretical world is being left behind by what is happening in the real world.
The irritating thing; there is a huge amount of really good technology based work going on; person focussed healthcare, not necessarily complex, often adapting existing technologies.
That is why I am really keen to support an innovative new set of awards; The Health Tec and You Awards. You can see them here. Have a look and think about the people you work with and who is using technology right now to make life easier, things move quicker and services smoother.
Nominate them, make them famous. Show the rest of us what good looks like... so we can copy it and do it better. Give them a pat on the back.
There are tec-heroes out there. Ask the people on the Croydon Tram.
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