Archive for September, 2008

At Penygroes leisure center.

It is fantastic, Asha loved it. well organised fun group. The two leaders were great to watch at work, and soon made Asha feel at home. Amazing.

I just hope it stays this way, as she has waited 12 months for her gymnastics, and it has been worth the wait!

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O.k. not really that interested in this. Because out here we battle for any rubbish collection, and I can never get to the local recycling center.

But I want to make some changes. We only spend about £7 a week on electricity. We dont have mains gas, but our bottle for the cooker lasts 6 months Oil.. corr thats expensive! Well we go through a tank a year, so hardly wastefull in this area. But wood! Yes wood. we burn it. It comes from a forest less than 3 miles away. The guy drops it off on his way home, so no extra mileage, but i need to find a way of useing less.

Heavier curtains in certain rooms would be good.. I am going to cut up a shower curtain for the bathroom as soon as  i can get one cheap.  I need some kind of heating for the kitchen, and I need to get onto the council for storm guards for both doors.. or do I just buy some?

What do you need to do, to keep your bills down.. Is there anywhere you can make savings?

Popularity: 14% [?]

I am not sure whether I will be doing anything about getting involved with this,I do feel its worth knowing about the information sheets availible for personal use with your children.

They have juniour and seniour sheets so use what is most usefull to you!

http://www.stjohnwales.co.uk/yls/news.asp?id=3

Vicki xx

Popularity: 15% [?]

Daliwn ddwylo’n gilydd, Yn gylch ar y cyd,

I uno cyfeillion, Mewn hyfryd o fyd,

Gadewch i ni ganu, Yn llawen a chryf,

A sawl sydd yn blino, Rhown gymorth i chi,

A sawl sydd yn blino, Rhown cymorth i chi.

English

Link your hands together, A circle we’ll make,

This bond of our friendship, No power can break,

Let’s all sing together, in one mighty throng,

If any be weary, Well help them along,

If any be weary, Well help them along.

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Asha

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When struck together in the dark a glow appears from inside the rock.

The reason for the glow

Scratching the rocks together separates the positive and negative charges within the quartz. Enough volatage is obtained to cause an electric arc. Then the two charges re-join to neutralize each other.

This phenomenon is called the piezo – electric effect and it has several important technological uses.

source stone science. August 08.

piezo – electric

The piezoelectric effect was discovered in 1880 by the Jacques and Pierre Curie brothers. They found out that when a mechanical stress was applied on crystals such as tourmaline, tourmaline, topaz, quartz, Rochelle salt and cane sugar, electrical charges appeared, and this voltage was proportional to the stress.

First applications were piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers and soon swinging quartz for standards of frequency (quartz clocks).

An everyday life application example is your car’s airbag sensor. The material detects the intensity of the shock and sends an electricla signal which triggers the airbag.

source :http://www.piezomaterials.com/ september 08

Popularity: 15% [?]

During our last home edd camp we made some ruler boomerangs.

Now I am going to try and explain this to you.

needed:

30 cm ruler.

cardboard

double sided sticky tape.

sticky paper and stuff to decorate

space to try it out

What to do:

draw around the ruler four times so you end up with 4 strips of cardboard.

using double sided sticky tape stick two peices together ontop of each other.

using tape again, sandwhich this peice between the other two, forming an x shape.

Decorate. Use as a traditional boomerang, experiement with the throw and if necessary curve the card a bit. But they do work.

I will try and get a picture of Asha’s up some time soon

Popularity: 18% [?]

For a long time I have wanted this mans book, it has been recommended to me ages ago and tonight steve has ordered me it.

Musical instruments from junk materials sound great fun!

http://www.nickpenny.com/book.html

Vicki xx

Popularity: 16% [?]

I realised tonight when putting Asha to bed, that weekends dont apply to our family any more.

We have a routine which isnt dictated to by outside pressures, such as school day or not school day. We have a routine which applys 7 days a week when it comes to night time. Yes we can change it but no morning has to be an up early for school day, sure some times we have to get up early for other things but they are not 5 days a week, and we can chose to change or not do them!

It was a pleasant revelation tonight.

Yep. Weekends dont apply, nor do weekdays. We just live :d

Popularity: 12% [?]

I had my first swimming lesson today. It was in Pwhelli leasure center.

At first I didnt want my mummy to leave me and the teacher kept on throwing things in the water, and I went and got them… then went back to my mummy. Mummy ended up very wet!

Anyway after a while I was soon in the water having made a new little friend. We played with the floats, and with each other. We caught hoops and we swam. I had a great time.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Some famous names who were schooled at home: John Stuart Mill, Patrick Moore, William Blake, Yehudi Menuhin, Bertrand Russell, Her Majesty the Queen

source : http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2eec30ea-3c0e-11dd-9cb2-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Can you add any to the list please?

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This morning Asha played with her daddy, after waking up FAR too early for any of our likings.

Then she decorated a white tea shirt with some t-shirt decorating pens I bought in a tescos’ reduced sale one time.  After this she played at the kitchen table untill lunch time drawing and playing.

After lunch Asha and I did some reading from the old ladybird Peter and Jane books. I like the dog….

We then did “get set to read” puzzles from the ELC they are a quiz which asha has to find find the corresponding item. today we did : find the partners, and find nearly the same. She did very well.

After that I managed to get her to play with daddy upstairs for a while, untill a parcel arrived so steve had to come downstairs.. and yes she is still down here!

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ARCH MEMBERS’ HELP NEEDED

You will probably have heard that the launch of the Contactpoint database – the index of all children and young people in England – has again been delayed because of security concerns.

A major difficulty has arisen in ‘shielding’ records on the system. Because the security of Contactpoint cannot be guaranteed, the records of some children will be hidden. This applies to those escaping domestic violence, to children whose whereabouts need to be kept secret following adoption/fostering or because their family is in witness protection, and also to children of public figures.

Unfortunately the government did not make plans to ‘shield’ children’s records as soon as they were put on the national database, instead leaving it to local authorities to apply shielding once they had joined the scheme – a process that will take place gradually over many months. This would leave some especially vulnerable children’s records open. The full story appeared in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/02/schools.children1

THIS IS WHAT WE ARE ASKING YOU TO DO:

We want as many ARCH members as possible – ‘all of you’ would be fantastic – to contact your local authority children’s services to ask them the following:

(a)        When will the local authority actually join Contactpoint? The government has set out ‘deployment slots’. Which one is your local authority in?

(b)        What are the arrangements for ‘shielding’? How does a family go about applying to have their children’s records shielded?

(c)        Can the local authority guarantee that shielding will be applied as soon as a child’s record is put on the national Contactpoint database – even if the LA is not joining for several months?

(d)        How will people in the area be told that they need to apply for shielding? Not all vulnerable children will be known already to the local authority – people don’t tend to ring them up to say “Hi, I’m running away from a violent partner and I’ve just moved into your area!”

(e)        Will young people be told how to apply for shielding on their own behalf?  What happens, for instance, about girls escaping forced marriage? Can they get their records shielded as a matter of urgency?

Please can you get as many answers as possible, and then email me with the results: terri@…

It’s really very important that we find out quickly what is going on at local level.

Thanks,

Terri

Terri Dowty

Director

Action on Rights for Children

www.arch-ed.org

www.archrights.wordpress.com

020 8558 9317

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If you are a junior doctor, you now belong to the only profession in the developed world where you can be REQUIRED by contract to work a basic 90 – 100 hours in a week ‘on-call’. When you work nights over Christmas and New Years you might be the lowest paid person in the whole hospital per hour (roughly minimum wage).

This group is for everyone who has been on call, on ward cover, or carrying a bleep/pager of any kind. At medical school you longed for the day when you could carry one, and be a REAL doctor, didn’t you?! Now you think of a few places you would like to shove the irritating, noisy bleeping thing…

We all love nurses, because they do the jobs we hate, and look out for us when we are just learning. They also gave the correct dose of drugs when you accidentally wrote milligrams instead of micrograms on your first day. We need them. But…

…there are a few points of etiquette that are unwritten, unspoken, but you just wish every nurse read, understood and inwardly digested:

1. Bleeping/paging is not a spinal reflex. Please take a few seconds to breathe, think and organise your thoughts, and stop flapping about. Half the time you may realise you didn’t even need to pick up the phone.

2. Mention what ward you are on. I don’t have the whole hospital directory of numbers memorised. If you hang up before telling me, chances are I won’t come along. This is called the ‘bingo-bleep’.

3. If you bleep/page someone, please wait by the phone. How can there be no-one picking up the phone at your end when I ring back?! This is called the ‘bleep-and-run’ and is exceptionally irritating.

4. Have the notes, obs chart and drug chart in front of you. Chances are I need to know what the obs were without waiting for you to run over to the bed and look, then run back over to the trolley to get the notes when I ask the next question. This is called the ‘relay-bleep’ and is probably not fun for you.

5. Please mention the name, age, and working diagnosis of the patient. The following is not acceptable: “Hello doctor, please see patient in 4, 6, she has chest pain”. That is ‘bleep-spam’

6. All patients with chest pain need an ECG. Don’t bleep/page me until one is being done or there in front of you.

7. If I’m in theatre (surgery), leave a clear message. The following is not acceptable: “Can you come to the ward afterwards, there are a few things to do”. This also counts as ‘bleep-spam’

8. Once in a while I will not respond to my bleep/pager. This is because I am jumping on top of someone’s chest trying to save their life. I am NOT ‘on break’. Doctors don’t have these.

9. Please check with the other nurses that you aren’t asking the same question as them. I really hate being bleeped/paged from the same ward from two phones and two nurses for same patient. This is called the ‘déjà-bleep’ and is distinctly un-fun

10. You spend twenty times as much time with each patient than we do. We appreciate your opinion and pertinent information. The following is not acceptable: “Well you’re the doctor, you should know”. Well actually I’m on call and have never met this patient who has spent 5 weeks with you.

11. Please be cheery on the phone and perhaps even flirt a little. I’ve just spent 12 hours running around the hospital doing mundane tasks, talking to angry relatives, putting my finger up bums, taking blood and ordering xrays. You will get your way far easier by making me smile.

12. When I answer the bleep/page please don’t say ‘Oops, sorry I had a question but not any more”. This is called the ‘fart-bleep’ and gets on my nerves (See also point 1).

13. Please don’t ask me to see virtually every patient on your ward when I’m on call. That’s called a ward round.

14. If you do cannulae on the ward regularly you will be my favourite nurse and I will do anything you say.

15. If I answer my bleep/pager and the line is engaged because you are bleeping/paging me from that phone again, I may well explode. This is called the ‘torpedo-bleep’ because of its incessant battle with my morale. Three hits and the boat may sink.

16. If a patient has died, he/she no longer cares how long it takes me to get to the ward. That’s a medical fact. Chances are I can do a few other jobs on my way there. If you bleep me again for this patient it better be because they have miraculously come back to life. This is called the ‘Lazarus-bleep’

17. The ‘MEWS / EWS / EWSS / PARS / MET’ score is a trigger for you to call me and is useless after that. I don’t give a crap what the score is. Tell me WHY the patient has scored it (e.g. respiratory rate? BP? heart rate?).

18. Please don’t start a sentence “Just to let you know…” or “Just so you know…” I hear this 50 times per shift. This is called the ‘zombie-bleep’ and you have just inadvertently disengaged my brain.

19. Please don’t bleep/page me and then instantly walk over to the other side of the ward to continue washing a patient behind a curtain. That makes the person who picks up the phone have to search for you miles away from the phone. This is called the ‘bleep-and-hide’ (See also point 3).

20. Don’t have someone else (e.g. a student) bleep/page for you. It’s cruel to them, and they are not your secretary. This is called the ‘kamikaze-bleep’ (see also points 4, 5 and 19)

21. Dosing a patient’s warfarin (whom you have never met and don’t know their history) at 4am is horrible, tedious, legally dubious and just plain bad for the patient. Please slap the day team round their faces when they arrive the next morning and don’t let it happen again.

22. Sit down! You may be surprised with how much this helps points 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, and 19

23a. If you happen to have a spare moment, eavesdrop when a doctor bleeps/pages another doctor. The majority of the time you will see how it should be done.

23b. Sometimes point 23a doesn’t work because the doctor is a week old and still learning the ‘etiquette’. He/she will learn very quickly as their senior on the other end shouts them down!

24. When a patient is in an ACUTE confusional state, please do not repeatedly ask me for, or demand sedation. This is not the year 1912. I might give sedation AFTER ruling out an infection, over-medication, drug withdrawal, metabolic cause, trauma, neurological, hypoxic, endocrine, and vascular causes, and AFTER using every other method of calming down the patient.

25. Read the latest entry/entries in the medical notes. Your question may be answered already (see also points 1, 4, 12, 13)

26. Please don’t bleep me half way through a ward round to ask whether we will be seeing a patient on the ward round. The answer is yes, and I’ve just missed what my Consultant said because I had to answer the phone to tell you that.

27. If I’ve told you I’m on my way to your ward, please don’t bleep again. Chances are that you have actually STOPPED me getting there while I went to the nearest phone. This is called the ‘road-block-bleep’

Source :David Naumann yahoo group Bleep Etiquette

Fantastic

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Yes, but its 6 am Asha!

Anyway, we got up.. i got up later than 6 though.. and we packed and we went to anglsey, and we unpacked and I came home and Steve and Asha had a great time.

Next day I returned as i felt so incompetent at home.

Asha made a lovely fairy, and I will try and get a photo of it up, and it rained, and rained all day :d

The woodburner kept us all warm though!

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Because everyone was getting ready for the camp.; We were invited around to J’s for CLAS this week.

Asha enjoyed playing with the kids. I enjoyed a drink of coffee and Steve took K to the shops.. or did K take Steve, we will never know.

Evening was bed early,, and packing? Oh we will do that tomorrow.

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