It's been two months since I last blogged, and I think that this is nature's way of telling me that this blog is finished.

When I started writing this I never thought that it would take off in the way that it did - two books, a radio play, opportunities to speak to lots of people at once and of course the upcoming TV series.

But all good things come to an end and, since leaving the London Ambulance Service, my life has settled down somewhat.

Which means that I have far less to write about the ambulance service, which is what this blog very quickly became about.

So I've decided to put this blog into a'Deep Freeze'. So the links, posts and everything else will remain here, but I won't be updating it any more. In a fortnight I'll close down the commenting system so that I don't have to spend the rest of my natural life removing spam comments.

The reasoning behind this is that this blog was supposed to be about anything - but due to it taking off as an'ambulance blog', I felt that I was'cheating'if I wrote something that wasn't about working on the ambulances. Now I no longer work full time on an ambulance the number of ambulance posts will decrease to almost nothing.

I'm thinking that it's for the best if this blog stays true to being about my time on the ambulances, and I start afresh somewhere else.

I shall be moving my presence on the internet over toBrian Kellett (dot) net, where I plan to write blog posts about whatever interests me. This means that if you are only interested in ambulance related blogposts as opposed to me writing about whatever tickles my fancy, this is where we part company.

For day to day things I shall be continuing to use twitter@Reynolds

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If you want to read about ambulance stuff, there are a few blogs out there that I read and you might be interested in.

From Scotland you haveTrauma Queen, who does indeed seem to be a trauma magnet, he also writes beautifully. Much better than me to be honest.

Insomniac Medicblogs while working for the London Ambulance Service - rather him than me.

Then there is999Medic, Mark Glencorse, who is much more energetic than me. He's also on a mission to change ambulance services for the better.

From across the pond isAmbulance Driver Files, whose politics I almost completely disagree with. He is a top bloke and has a wry sense of humour.

And finally but not least there isRogue Medic, another American, who posts incredibly well thought out articles about making EMS better, mostly by the use of science.

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So, that's that. Time to move on toBrian Kellett (dot) net, where I shall be writing about things that interest me - not just ambulance related stuff.

And if this is farewell, then may I wish you safe travels, and I hope that while you've known me I've entertained you, and maybe made you think a little.

The interesting thing about my changed work practices is that I'm now much closer to my patients.

I don't mean I feel like holding their hands or buying the Christmas presents, I mean I'mphysicallycloser to them.

Which seems strange, after all the back of an ambulance is certainly more cramped than the examination room that I use to diagnose, treat and educate my patients.

The problem is that I find myself having to get much closer to my patients to examine them.

As an example - if I were to pick up a healthy looking person with a sore throat and a cough, I wouldn't get too close to them. I'd plug them into the machinery of blood pressure, oxygen levels and temperature, then take a seat across the way from them while they coughed and spluttered and made out to be much sicker than they really were.

Now, however, I find myself getting very much up close and personal with my patients - if someone comes to me with a sore throat and cough I need to know what their tonsils look like, whether they are pus-ridden, what their breath smells like. I need to look in their ears, I need to feel their lymph nodes. And so on and so forth.

I was always convinced that when I left shift work I would stop getting ill - and several of my old colleagues have commented on how healthy I look when compared to my time on the ambulances. And this is true - I do feel a lot better.

That was until an outbreak of a viral upper respiratory tract infection became a rather popular reason to attend the UCC.

(And as an aside, are viral URTIs rare in SE asia? I only ask because a lot of the people I see are from there and, while the demographics of Newham are in their favour, I wonder if the reason they pitch up to hospital is because they have had no experience of such things in their homeland. In a similar vein, I would guess that chickenpox is also rare there).

So, I've been seeing alotof these viral URTI patients. And getting close to them.

And now I have the bloody thing. During my four days off which,I swear, were going to be spent doing interesting and productive things, but which have now been spent drinking lemon tea, lying on the sofa and wondering if this really is just an URTI and not the first stages of The Himalayan Coughing Yak Death-plague. Of Doom.

Thankfully I'm feeling a little bit better now, just in time to return to work tomorrow.

(I suspect that in six months time I shall be immune toeverything).

One of the advantages of working in an Urgent care centre, rather than on the road (only one, there are many other advantages), is that you should be able to get off on time. Unlike the ambulance service, you choose when to see patients (although you do try to see them as quickly as possible), so if you have only three minutes to go until the end of your shift you just don't call in a patient - instead you tidy the room, fill out a bit of paperwork, or make sure that your hands are spotlessly clean for going home.

Of course, while this is true, sometimes the real world has something to say on this and things go a bit wrong.

For example - if I have twenty minutes to go, I can call in that abdominal pain patient knowing that I should be able to finish assessing, treating and writing up the notes. Where it goes wrong is when the patient gets fifteen minutes into the consultation before springing a horrible surprise on me - such as the real reason why they are in my room is because they took an overdose of tablet'x', they just haven't told anyone else. Anyone like the triage nurse who would have then sent them to the much more appropriate ED...

In that case you have to do a lot more assessing, a lot more writing up and then refer to the medical doctors - the medics, in my experience, are much quicker at answering their bleep than the orthopaedic doctors - of course the ortho's may well have someone's legs up behind their ears while they replace a hip, so they may be a bit busy.

Either way, you then have to fanny around printing out notes and front sheets and so on and so forth because, while the UCC is paper-free, the rest of the hospital isn't.

And that is why I'm typing this after leaving work over half an hour late.

So, y'know, ignore the spelling and grammar eh? This is a first draft typed before I collapse into bed.

I think I need to practice my time management skills.

(My patient didn't overdose, but they had something even more tricky wrong with them and they still needed referring to the medics. I've changed the actual circumstance to respect confidentiality).