Critical list

Those of us who work on the shop floor of the NHS are a simple lot. We want to get through the day doing the best for our patients. We don't want things to be awkward or complicated. We just want to get on with our jobs.

Take my job, for example. I drive around in an ambulance and am called to assist people in various states of illness. All I want to do is make sure that my patients (and I) get to the hospital alive.

The equipment I use the most? A carry chair, a blanket and the machine for checking the patient's vital signs.

The carry chair needs to be light, tough and able to carry our heaviest patients. There are some terribly complicated chairs out there, chairs that will roll down stairs rather than force us to lift them and the patient.

But we don't use them because they are too complicated, too heavy and only fit certain types of stairs. It would be impossible to use them safely in most of the locations we find ourselves in. So we stick with the simple.