A morning of learning at Pulse Live

Just about overcame the urge to go to the ‘Your Future’ stream – simply so I could ask a Pulse helper the deeply existential question, ‘Where is Your Future?’ – and landed instead in ‘Your Practice’ to discover whether I’m a winner or loser in the new contract.

So…winners are those with no MPIG, understand and embrace change, work at scale and integrate with community teams. Arse.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. While the proportion of patients targeted in the new unplanned admissions DES, at 2% of list size, according to the speaker, ‘seems a lot’ – er, because it is – there is better news about the care plan template which should be ‘adapted to make it as simple as possible’. So it’s full steam ahead with my plan to scrawl ‘Phone 999’ in crayon on a blank piece of paper.

At the break nearly diverted from my talk of choice simply by the intrigue of the next ‘Your Skills’ talk: ‘Vasectomy: no scalpel, no needle’. No way? Then how? The power of positive vas-occluding thought? Or maybe the name of the speaker – a Dr Spooner – gives a clue about his implement of choice.

I’ll never know, though, because I opted for the ‘Feverish Child’ lecture – some days, that’s all I seem to see, so I thought it worth knowing if I’m getting it right. Red alert when the speaker was discussing the red zone of the traffic light system, only to discover that his entire talk had vaporised.

And it provided the top quote of the morning: ‘The traffic light is your friend.’ He’s obviously never been on the north circular on a Monday morning.