A plea to all employed in the public sector

A comment in a recent blog post got me thinking.  The conservative party is promoting infighting between each sector of those in public service, and as a result sniping and bickering is readily happening as to ‘who has it worse’.  This bickering is allowing the cuts imposed on the public sector to go unnoticed and remain ignored while each group fights with each other.

It’s time to fight back.  I implore all those who read this blog to contact me with examples of how the cuts in their sector is harming those who use their sector and how the cuts are reducing the level of service the public are getting.  Only by doing this can we show the voting public the harm that these cuts are causing and exposing the falsehoods planted in the media.  This invitation goes out to everyone in the public sector, armed forces, emergency services, healthcare, social services, council staff etc.

For the love of whatever deity you pray to, DO NOT contact me via your work email, nor log in to your private email through your work intranet.  Hotmail accounts can be set up in a disposable way (takes about 10 minutes), as can yahoo etc.  It goes without saying, don’t give dates, person identifiable information nor anything else that can be tracked back to you.  I will of course remove all names.

If you don’t contact me then when the public remain uninformed you can’t really complain that there’s no balance in the media nor how your point never gets across.  So please, get in touch and share the damage being done that’s being imposed by these cuts.

I can be reached via twitter – @NTDailyMail or via Facebook or via email adifferentviewpoint@hotmail dot com (replace the ‘dot’ with . and take out the spaces folks – I have to type it like that to prevent automated spam).

The Daily Mail show their colours

The recent offence taken by Ed Milliband over the Daily Mail article written about his Father has shown the political elite what I, and many others, have known for some time.  That the Daily Mail is a paper that happily distorts whatever it wants.  The Daily Mail, among others, have written these types of articles about public servants for years and have suffered no ill effects for any of them.  

It is only now that politicians are coming under this vitriolic attack that Mr. Milliband questions the “morality and boundaries” of the media however he has remained silent after every misleading and hateful article written previously written.

While I would not want the Mail to write this type of article about any parent I do hope it shows people how the Mail happily twists small snippets of information to their own end and the slant they put on articles.  I also hope that it causes real change to be put into place, although I know that is highly unlikely.

Unfortunately the only way that the paper will change is if people no longer buy their physical paper nor visit their website.  If these two things were to happen they would cease to be of any importance whatsoever.  

Why talking about Winsor’s uniform is important.

 

As of a few moments ago that’s how many hits “How can Tom Winsor look at himself in the mirror?“.  That’s one blog, started around 2 weeks ago with a post dedicated to one civilian and his ridiculous decision to wear a full ceremonial uniform to a memorial event.

Some have questioned whether it is appropriate to divert attention from National Police Memorial Day and whether this should have been discussed on another day.  Unfortunately there was little to no publicity in the media about this important remembrance service.  The BBC hid their story within the ‘Wales’ sub-section of the UK news, the Daily Mail hid the story as simply part of HRH Prince Charles day to day activities and a Google search for NPMD brings up a mere two stories in papers.

Police officers up and down the land have shared their horror and revulsion at this man, over 6,000 shares on FB and Twitter.  This means that even though media up and down the land have attempted to manipulate public opinion in such a transparent manner you have all ensured the public are aware of the event and the strength of feeling towards it.  All this work was done by you and I really can’t thank you enough.  It’s only with individual police officers spreading this news that allows for balance and replies and there must be a continuation of this to stop the police being constantly derided in the press.

 

How can Tom Winsor look at himself in the mirror?

Tom Winsor, responsible for reducing the starting wage for the Police to £19,000 pa, while at the same time increasing the entry qualifications; who decided that direct entry to the significant rank of Superintendent was a good idea as well as being able to make Police officers redundant; who increased the age at which Police officers can draw their pension; who decided that Police officers must have mandatory fitness tests, but not give them any time within work to keep their fitness levels to that standard (unlike Fire & Rescue and Ambulance HART), has decided that wearing this uniform to the National Police Memorial Day is appropriate.

 

Apparently this is the ‘ceremonial uniform’ of the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, which Tom Winsor now is.  To me, and to many others, this is the uniform of a Chief Officer of a UK Police Force.  

How dare he.  How dare he believe he is in any way entitled to wear a uniform in which men and women far braver than he have died in.  Men and women who gave their lives in service to this country, protecting the public, the vulnerable and the most needy of our society.  How dare he have the temerity to meet the families of dead officers while wearing this uniform, look them in the eye and tell them he is sorry for their loss.  Not only has he never served a single day in any police force in the country but has also destroyed the terms and conditions of officers up and down the land.  

I hope Winsor looks at the families of the dead, sees the quiet dignity mixed with the total sadness in their eyes and realises he isn’t fit to wear that uniform and never does so again.  It would have been far more respectful to the fallen to wear a somber suit and black tie but then that wouldn’t have given him the opportunity to play dress up.

A desperate state of affairs

Today I read the incredibly sad story of Bella Hellings.  Bella was a three month baby who died after suffering a seizure in March.

Unfortunately it took 26 minutes for paramedics to arrive on scene due to a number of wholly preventable issues.  The fault of these issues lies squarely at the feet of the trust rather than the individual paramedics.

The first issue is that Bella lived on a new build estate, so new in fact that her address didn’t feature on trust vehicles sat navs. Unfortunately for Bella, as is so very common, the houses all look so very similar so the detail her fraught parents gave as a distinguishing feature wasn’t unusual.  What I ask of you the reader is tonight, when it’s dusk, step outside your house.  Go to the side of the road and see if you can clearly see your house number?  I can pretty much guarantee that it’s not clearly visible.  For your own sake please find a much larger house number than the one you have and make sure it can be seen from the road.  Yes I know you know where you live, as does the postman but the emergency services don’t and unless it’s clearly visible from the road there will be a completely preventable delay in finding you when you need help at your most vulnerable time.  I have no idea if this was the case at Bella’s house but it is at pretty much every other house I’ve ever had to visit and is a point worth mentioning.

The next issue was that an ambulance had to stop for fuel.  How have we got to the state that we run our ambulances so ragged that there is insufficient time to refuel them other than when they’re on an emergency call? Now I don’t know what vehicles East of England run and I don’t know their range but I’m pretty sure, like everywhere else in the country, the crews get called out seconds after they log on and are constantly run until they finish.  I also know that WMAS has staff called Ambulance Fleet Assistants.  Their job essentially consists of ensuring the vehicles are ready to go out at the start of each shift, part of this is to refuel them from their own diesel tanks they have at some of their ambulance hubs.  I would suggest that East of England need to do similar to ensure their vehicles start the shift fully fueled.  While this wont fix the problem of having ambulances run constantly it will prevent issues like this from happening again, additionally it will deliver cost savings which will enable more money to be put into frontline vehicles and crews.

The key issue on the refueling of the double crewed ambulance (DCA) is there isn’t enough of them.  There simply aren’t enough DCAs to go around.  Any paramedic who crews a car will be able to tell you of horrendous waits for very sick patients, I’m personally aware that in at least one county the amount of DCAs available on a Friday/Saturday night is regularly less than the digits on one hand.  This leads to delays, the DCAs are constantly working their entire shift and their journey times are now longer as EDs have been shut and downgraded.  Unfortunately this means there is no resilience within the system and it’s not beyond the realm of imagination to imagine that one day, somewhere in the country all the ambulances will be held up outside one hospital and something terrible happen leading to a horrendous wait for DCAs to arrive on scene.

I’m very suprised that no-one has every submitted an FOI request for one specific night and asked for DCA crewing levels across the country – I would be astounded if there wasn’t a sea change after if this is undertaken.  Cars have their place in the ambulance service but with services chasing a government imposed arbitrary target of 8 minutes, with their entire worth measured on this one target, it appears services are crewing more and more cars at the expense of DCAs.

There shouldn’t be a choice between DCAs and cars, there needs to be a dramatic uplift in funding for ambulance services across the country, until this happens there will be incidents like this up and down the land and more people will die.  I implore the government to give ambulance services more cash for vehicles and crews as they are so desperately needed.

Let’s straighten a few things out

While perusing various media outlets looking for stories that may be of interest I’ve noticed a few wild inaccuracies that I desperately want to correct.  Some of these examples aren’t really appropriate to critique each article but as concepts I’m happy to correct as you’ll see further down the page.  However if the media can’t report  basic things correctly how can we have confidence in their ability to report larger issues well?

If you’re a medical professional, please be kind.  I’ve tried to keep things as simple as possible and remove as much medical jargon as I can – this may have led to a little over simplification in places but is necessary.

The first thing I’ve noticed is that some papers think that the terms ‘cardiac arrest’ and ‘heart attack’ are interchangeable.  This is blatantly incorrect.  

A heart attack is where one of the arteries supplying the muscle of the heart becomes blocked.  This blockage is when a plaque breaks off from fatty deposits lining the blood vessels and then blocks smaller vessels further along.  Depending on where the blockage is will determine how much heart muscle is damaged.  If sufficient damage is caused then cardiac arrest will follow, conversely if the blockage is small enough then the patient may not even be away that damage has occurred.  

Cardiac arrest is where the heart ceases beating entirely or beats in such an erratic way as to prevent blood from being pumped around the body.  

As you can now see these two terms are clearly not the same thing.  While a heart attack can lead to cardiac arrest not every one will, additionally not every cardiac arrest is caused by a heart attack – a cardiac arrest can be reversible which is why it’s so important to start CPR as soon as a cardiac arrest is evident.  The reversible causes of cardiac arrest are a lack of oxygen, a significant loss of blood, hypothermia, extreme low blood sugar and issues with salts and minerals in the blood.  Additional reversible causes are collapsed lungs, fluid around the heart, some poisons and blood clots that have blocked blood flow to vital organs.  This doesn’t mean that every case of these is absolutely reversible, in some cases the damage is too great too quickly or because of the distances involved it just takes too long to get the patient to the help required by which point it is too late and the patient unfortunately dies.

Obviously not every cardiac arrest is reversible, I’m sure you don’t need me to run through that particular list.

Talking about cardiac arrest leads me nicely onto my next topic, defibrillators.

Here’s something that will suprise an awful lot of people, a defibrillator does not restart a heart, it stops it.  Before I get rotten tomatoes thrown at me, here’s the explanation, starting with some basic physiology.

As I’m sure you’re aware the heart pumps blood to the lungs so that it can pick up oxygen, once the blood is oxygen rich it returns to the heart so that it can be pumped to the body so that this oxygen can be used by the body.  To do this the heart needs to beat in a very organised way and in the human four chambered heart the top two chambers beat first then the bottom two beat.  The top two chambers job is essentially to properly fill the bottom two chambers and it’s the bottom chambers that push the blood to either the lungs or to the rest of the body.  Because of an inbuilt electrical system in the heart this process, when working properly, follows a nice steady rhythm and this gives you the nice regular trace you see on an ECG.  Should the inbuilt electrical system of the heart fail then what can happen (not every time, depends on the problem) is that each cell starts to beat independently of each other.  This process is called fibrillation and if it effects the bottom two chambers of the heart then the heart will no longer pump blood around the body.  It is possible to attempt to reset the heart into a normal rhythm by passing electricity across the heart with a defibrillator.  The hope is that by stopping the heart it will allow the normal electrical system to regain control and for a normal heartbeat to resume.

There is another rhythm that can be successfully shocked called ventricular tachycardia, while a different disease process it can also be shocked – for the purposes of using a defibrillator they’re treated in the same way.

As you can see there are only two heart rhythms that can be shocked with a defibrillator, this means that when someone is ‘flat lining‘ there is already no electrical activity in the heart, so trying to stop the heart with a defibrillator has no benefit and no shock will be given.  There is another heart rhythm called ‘pulseless electrical activity‘ this is where essentially the electrical system is already working properly but for whatever reason the muscle of the heart isn’t responding.  It’s common sense to not pass electricity across this rhythm as the electrical system is already working so stopping that will bring no benefit to the patient.

The final inaccuracy I want to work on today is as follows, I see time and again various articles where the reporter triumphantly reports that a person ‘died of a cardiac arrest’.  Everyone dies of a cardiac arrest, it’s what caused the arrest that needs to be explained: merely stating a person died of a cardiac arrest is like saying your car stopped because it broke down rather than saying the alternator broke, it ran out of fuel or an oil leak caused the engine to seize.

I think that’s all the pedantry anyone can take for today.  As and when other things annoy me there may be more ‘media corrections’ coming out.

It appears some journalists don’t know what they want.

I’m writing today about an article in Saturdays Daily Express, “Health and safety rules have turned into a sick joke”.  It’s confusing as it appears that the Stephen Pollard, who wrote the article, isn’t really sure about what he’s writing about nor what he actually wants.

 

The article starts with a mention to an unrelated case of which I have no knowledge nor expertise so cannot comment with any authority – however to ensure that you can read the entire article I’ve copied it, you also know I haven’t missed anything out.

 

 

The article talks about Godfrey Smith, a former Community First Responder who broke the law while responding in a service marked vehicle responding to a call.  The marked vehicle is pictured here, in an article published on 11th September in the Metro.  You will note that although it has green and yellow retro-reflective ‘battenburg’ markings it possesses neither blue lights and therefore it will also not have a siren.  The Daily Express article concentrates on the fact that Mr. Smith exceeded the speed limit by 50% as the sole factor, whereas the Metro article shows that Mr. Smith not only exceeded the speed limit, but also ignored a ‘keep left’ bollard in order to circumvent a red traffic light.  It is worth repeating that Mr. Smith did not, as he had neither, activate blue lights and sirens both of which are essential equipment for claiming those exemptions, exemptions he is not entitled to.  

 

The article then states that no-one was injured as a result of Mr. Smiths actions, this is irrelevant.  He broke the law, and according to the Metro article he broke the law three times (excess speed, fail to obey keep left bollard, crossing a stop line when a red light is shown).  Apparently the SatNav on the vehicle required updating, again this is irrelevant.  Anyone who has done any further driver training knows that observation of road conditions and signs trumps whatever the little plastic box tells you, if the road sign says 20 then that is the maximum permissible speed by law.

 

The article then moves onto the tragic case of Mr. Simon Burgess who the coroner recorded died in accidental circumstances.  It is factually incorrect to suggest, as this article does, that a delay in sending in help to Mr. Burgess directly caused his death as the coroner informed the court that the delay in waiting for specialist teams “was not a significant factor in his death”.

The article then moves onto the tragic event of Shannon Powell.  A young girl who first had a seizure and then went into respiratory arrest.  This article fails to mention the fact that Miss Powell was having a seizure, this makes carrying her virtually impossible for any length of time and depending on the method used it can be impossible to manage a persons airway – without this airway management death would have been inevitable.  

As a quick breakdown I’ll list the available options to carrying a person so you, the reader can establish why Miss Powell would have been left on the ground until the ambulance could be brought closer

• Carry chair – only possible to use with someone who is conscious enough to protect their own airway.  Carrying over rough ground is possible, but only if the patient remains still
• Longboard – Requires the patient to be strapped onto the board, depending on the nature of the seizure this would be impossible, furthermore movement dramatically changes the center of gravity which makes carrying a seizing patient virtually impossible
• Scoop – see longboard for explanation
• Carry sheet (only some ambulance trusts carry these) it is impossible to manage a persons airway when in a carry sheet, meaning your patient may asphyxiate prior to reaching the ambulance

 

This article then moves onto what can only be described as a rant.  Furthermore it incorrectly describes Mr. Smith as an ‘ambulance driver’.  This ambiguous term means nothing in law – does the journalist mean paramedic? Or does he mean someone who, as in this case, drives a vehicle provided by the ambulance service?  I’ve yet to meet an ‘ambulance driver’ anyone who is ambulance crew, regardless of their training, does far more than just drive the ambulance.  It is worth remembering that Mr. Smith is not ambulance crew.  He has training only slightly above that of a first aider and is limited on his treatment options, especially when compared to a paramedic or an ambulance technician. 

 

What really bugs me about this article, and I mean really bugs me is that the journalist links to one of his previous articles, titled ‘Too many people killed by speeding emergency vehicles’ an ill informed article describing paramedics as ‘stretcher bearers’.  The opening paragraph of this linked article is as follows

“Those at the wheel of emergency response vehicles can never be excused from driving responsibly.  After all, far too many people are injured and killed on the roads by police cars, ambulances or fire engines going at breakneck speed.”

This is incredibly hypocrisy, in one article he defends a volunteer driver, who has no exemptions under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 or the Traffic Signs Regulations & General Directions 2002 , who failed to adhere to basic driving standards.  In the other he calls for a reduction in road traffic casualties from irresponsible driving by emergency service vehicles, which it is worth remembering Mr. Smiths vehicle was not.

Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, as he has admitted to driving past stationary vehicles in excess of the speed limit and failed to obey traffic signs while in a marked service vehicle when not entitled to do so, I have no sympathy for him.  It was his choice to break the law and he must accept the consequences.  He placed significant numbers of the public at risk and that is indefensible.

Police criticised for restraining aggressive individual

The police are often called upon to protect the most vulnerable of society, the sick, the young and the elderly.  So it should be of no suprise to the public that when a care home phoned the police because a they could not control an aggressive male the police arrived and restrained him to protect the residents, themselves and the male.

What makes this particular male different is that he too suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, a disease where depending on the severity can make the patient violent as well as suffer from visual, olfactory and auditory hallucinations.

The article from the Daily Express starts off with an inflammatory headline:

 

The family here, as upsetting as it is has mistaken the use of handcuffs with arrest.  While their use is most common during an arrest they’re also used during stop/search and when sectioning a person under s136 of the Mental Health Act.  Unsurprisingly ACPO have a document on the use of handcuffs.  Bearing in mind the potential aggression or violence that Alzheimer’s patients may subject others to then according to the ACPO guidance then at first glance this is an appropriate use of handcuffs.

 

This section of the article is overtly critical of officers who had to make a split second decision.  They were confronted by powerfully built male (as shown in the original photo) who no longer has the ability to recognise when he has hurt someone or control his anger in a ‘normal’ way.  The officers had to prevent harm from coming to the other residents and prevent harm from coming to themselves.  There are number of ways this can be done.  A police officer may use certain grips or holds – this means that the officer would have to maintain this hold until such time as the detained person either ceases being violent/aggressive or tires themselves out.  The officer could use arm entaglement but again this means the officer has to remain hands on until such time as the risk is no longer present, or they could do as they have done in this instance and handcuff the person.  It should be noted that it is not best practice to handcuff someone to the front ‘palm to palm’ as this does not allow for effective control and restraint.

I am sure the officers who attended would have attempted to use their conflict management training to calm Mr. Hyrons before using force, however as I was not there (indeed, as were not the family or the reporter) we do not know the level of aggression Mr. Hyrons was offering at the time.

Interestingly the family admit that the gentleman in question has ‘childish tantrums’ however they don’t expand on this.  As their family I would expect them to know what phrases and actions would calm him down however people who have only just met him would have no idea of these tactics so they are not available to either the care home staff or the attending officers.

 

There is no doubt that Mr. Hyrons was upset, however an Alzheimer’s patient who is upset can be a terrifying experience for those who are not used to that particular patient, it is also potentially dangerous to allow them to remain unrestrained due to the potential risk of harm coming to the patient and those around them.

Mr. Hyrons son states he spoke to one of the officers involved and the officers were indeed correct in their comments.  As Mrs. Hyron was not present and did not witness her husbands behaviour she cannot state that it was ‘brutish’.  Would she rather her husband was restrained on the floor? Would she rather he ran amok and injured other residents or the staff?  Both of those are potential risks of allowing her husband to remain unrestrained in the way that he was.

The comments from the Alzheimer’s society are spectacularly unhelpful, especially stating that the officers ‘abused’ Mr Hyrons.  They used force on an aggressive male who staff, who are dementia specialists, were afraid of.  If they would rather Alzheimer’s patients remain unrestrained at all times I’m sure they have fool proof ways to prevent harm from coming to those patients?

The balance on this article is poor, four lines are allocated to the police to rebut this article.

The article in the Express is essentially a rehashed version of this article in the Birmingham Mail from 20th September.  The original article has a little more detail than the one in the Express and states that Mr. Hyron was sectioned for 28 days following this incident.  Interestingly in this article Mrs. Hyrons admits that “My husband has been aggressive towards me in the past…” although this comment was absent in the article in the Express.

Overall this incident is fraught with difficulties.  I have no doubt that no officer anywhere in the country wakes up in the morning relishing the thought of restraining an unwell, elderly male.  That said every officer would act to reduce harm to vulnerable people and in this case, as unpleasant as it is, handcuffing an aggressive dementia patient is reducing harm to those around him including the other residents and patients within the care home.

The Police, trusted by over 60% of the British Public

Today I stumbled over an interesting report by The Committee on Standards in Public Life.  This report, consisting of data from 1968 interviews with a wide ranging cross section of the public, is designed to show how much trust is given to various occupations in the public eye.

 

This natty little graph shows a nice trend here since 1999.  That the Police are consistently found to be trustworthy by around 60% of the public.  That’s worth repeating.  Since 1999 60% of the public trust the police, and that it’s held steady.  If we look at the lower end of the chart we find journalism – however I’ll come to that later.  What we find in the mid 40% range is business leaders.  This means the British public trusts those who hold senior business positions consistently less than those who hold senior police positions.  This means that should direct entry for senior ranks happen then the police will be forced to use people who the public trust less than the current senior staff, how this will improve policing I’m not too sure.

It is interesting to note that only 18% of the public trust journalists as a whole.  That’s a full 40 percentage points less than the amount of the public who trust the police, worth bearing in mind the next time a journalist implores greater transparency or other measures to increase trust in the police.

While impressive that the vast majority of the public trust the police there is obviously room for improvement and is an area for further study. Of particular note is that Norway and Germany have consistently higher public trust in their police than the UK (as shown in the graph below).  Our government should be looking to those police systems to see why the public trust them so much so that those systems can be introduced, assuming they fit within UK legal frameworks.

 

 

There is considerably more work that’s needed to be done by Westminster MPs to increase their trust, especially in comparison with other European countries.

 

With only 30% of the public trusting Parliament as a whole and even fewer (20%) trusting politicians it appears that Westminster needs to be utterly reformed in order to gain the wholesale public trust.  It is worrying that both parliament and politicians are on a downward trend on public trust.  In this instance HM Government should be reviewing the systems in Norway and the Netherlands to see how the public trust is so high.

The study also shows that the police are held to account more than any other organisation measured, and that the police consistently put the interests of the public above their own.

What is worrying is that only 20% of the public think that politicians tell the truth, that 18% of the public think that politicians ensure that public money is is spent wisely and only 11% of the public think that politicians own up when they make mistakes.  

This study clearly shows that the public consistently trust the police, regardless of what the media may be telling us especially as it has been shown that the amount of the public that trust tabloid journalists is 14%.  It will be interesting to see what measures the tabloids will want to be put in place to increase their levels of trust but I wont be holding my breath that they will want to implement any at all.

How to scare parents

On 16th September the Daily Mail published an article with the headline “Babies given Calpol just once a month ‘are five times as likely to develop asthma'”.  This is of obvious concern to parents who wish to keep their children safe and healthy.  The article describes an article published in May 2012, there is no explanation as to why it has taken the Mail 16 months to get around to publishing this article.

 

The article starts reasonably well, with well publicised figures that are can be verified easily. 

 

The article states that the Patient Information Leaflet contains no information on health risks, this is demonstrably false – what the Mail meant to say is that ” the Patient Information Leaflet doesn’t contain the results of a study released on 29th May 2012″

 

The article then makes some rather unfortunate assumptions.  They appear to have not read the study correctly, as the study states that the the rate of self reported asthma symptoms increases as opposed to those diagnosed by their Doctor.  I have some concerns about the study itself and will critique that shortly however for the moment I’ll stay with the Mail article.

The Mail, while stating the the risk of asthma increases by 60%, doesn’t say what the overall risk is.  In addition it doesn’t state if the risk in Spain of having asthma is the same as the UK, which incidentally it isn’t, the rate of asthma is Spain in children runs between 1.1% – 2.7% depending on criteria being measured.  A 60% increase of these rates means a potential increase to 1.76% – 4.32%. In the UK the rate of asthma is already higher as it runs from 3.5% – 9.3%, so any percentage increase is significantly different.  The Mail completely fails to point this out.

 

It is only right at the very end of the article that any balance is given, by this point worried parents may either have stopped reading entirely or may believe that because there is so little information rebutting the article that the study in question is gospel.  Unfortunately the Mail is either unaware of, or ignoring, medical best practice which is to review all the evidence available and the reliability of the evidence.  The article fails to mention how many articles are available discussing potential causes nor details the reliability of the article itself.

The study, Exposure to paracetamol and asthma symptoms, is a study which is entirely dependent on the recall ability of parents and children.  It asks parents of very young children to remember how often they gave paracetamol based medication during the first 12 months of the child’s life.  One of the questions asked is “In the first 12 months of life of your child, did you regularly give him/her paracetamol” the available answer to this question is yes/no.  My definition of ‘regular’ is different to yours I’m sure and will vary among most people.  It would be far stronger evidence to ask how often paracetamol was given during those 12 months rather than use a vague term with no parameters.  In addition the data obtained simply states whether there was any asthma symptoms at least once during the life of the child.  To extrapolate this to mean ‘asthma’ is disingenuous as there are a number of diagnostic tests that need to be completed to ensure the cause of the symptoms are indeed asthma related rather than any other respiratory disease.  While the key points show there is an increased correlation between paracetamol consumption and symptoms of asthma it (deliberately) fails to state if this is a cause of the asthma or simply because those who are asthmatic may be more susceptible to respiratory illness that could result in a raised temperature.  In addition the article clearly states “a causal relationship cannot be established”, what this means in plain English is that it cannot be said with any authority that paracetamol causes asthma.

Overall the Mail article is written in such a way that causes unnecessary panic in parents.  It fails to give any advice to parents nor assess the strength of the study and in fact it appears that the authors of the article have failed to read the study fully, or failed to understand the limitations of the study.

If you’re a parent reading this and are still unsure what to do then it’s summed up as follows: if your child is running a temperature, or is in pain then paracetamol solutions (such as calpol) are widely acknowledged to be safe as long as the instructions on the packaging are followed.  It is not advisable to give paracetamol to your child for reasons other than those it is indicated for (unless your Doctor or Pharmacist tells you to do so).  If you’re still worried please contact your GP or a nurse working at your GP surgery, Pharmacists are also excellent in providing information about medication and you can talk to them without an appointment.

If you need quicker (or more detailed) information on asthma then NHS Choices or Asthma UK are both excellent sources of information.