Busy Busy Busy
Yesterday, Nee Naw Control took over 5000 calls. That’s 2000 more than an average day; as many as an average New Year’s Eve. Two things were to blame: 30° temperatures in London, and England’s first world cup football match (1-0 to us! Yay!) Both these things had people in the pubs in droves, merrily falling over, fighting and passing out well into the early hours. The delays for ambulances were not funny: after a while every call was someone ringing back to complain that the ambulance had not arrived yet. I did derive some pleasure from telling the maternataxis/toothaches/crying babies etc things like “Sorry, we’re extremely busy, and we have to give priority to genuine life threatening emergencies. You could be waiting some time, if not forever” but I hate, loathe and despise telling genuine callers that they are not getting an ambulance right now because they are all out dealing with silly football fans who can’t handle their beer. The people that were really suffering were the Assist Onlys - that is, old people who have fallen over, can’t get up, and need an ambulance to lift them and check them over. They aren’t a priority, because they aren’t seriously injured, but I just hate to think of old people languishing on the floor, alone, scared and helpless.
One irate relative, whose gran had been on the floor for two hours, lost his temper and started shouting at me. “I’m gonna be honest with you,” he said, “I think you should **** all those football ****wits and tell them, it’s your own fault you got into this mess, you can wait, people like my gran should come first. What kind of system places some idiot who’s drunk too many beers and fallen in a gutter and banged his head over a 90 year old lady who has been on the floor for two hours?”
I don’t normally tolerate being shouted at, but I had to concede this one had a point.
Fingers crossed I am not call taking again tonight as I am starting to lose my voice.
on June 11th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Don’t forget that full moon!
We had a local folk festival and a university ball at the same time. Hardest shift I’ve done yet…drunken fights still starting all the way up to 5am.
But I have to agree, there is something satisfying being able to tell wasters that they are waiting because they’re not a life threatening emergency. Suddenly after an hour they remember how to walk to casualty.
on June 11th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
and that was only the first match
on June 11th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
I would have found it hard not to openly agree with the guy!
Surely we can adjust AMPDS to make allowances for an element of self-induced idiocy? (Toungue *kinda* in cheek)
on June 12th, 2006 at 2:28 am
sorry, i might have missed something,why couldn’t the guy who was calling about his gran pick her up himself?
on June 12th, 2006 at 9:55 am
On saturday night we were sitting on some stone steps outside a shopping centre waiting for a friend when a drunk guy appear pulling a girl along. The girl was urging him to be careful but he didn’t listen, tripped and fell down 6 steps landing on his head on concrete. He was knocked out and lying at our feet. There was a guy from security nearby and he came over and called on his radio for a first aider. The girl was screaming and trying to get the guy to wake up. He was breathing and began to come around and the first aid guy appeared from inside the building and made him sit up and wiped the blood off his head. My friend called an ambulance (because he was knocked out for several minutes and there was blood coming out of his mouth). She had moved away and was taking a while so I went over to see what was going on. She was trying to explain where we were and she said that the dispatcher wouldn’t send an ambulance because she didn’t know the road name. Thanks to reading this blog I understood why this was and went off to find her a road name. When I told her and she told the dispatcher I could hear her answering questions about the patient. Not long after that we heard the ambulance and so we pointed and when they had got there we left. I think reading your blog and Tom Reynold’s has made me understand a lot more about how it looks from the other side. My question to you is were we right to call an ambulance. I think we were because at the time my friend started to call the guy had been knocked out for a couple of minutes and it wasn’t obvious that he was going to come around but once he did should we have said one wasn’t needed any more?
on June 12th, 2006 at 10:45 am
I think you were right to call the ambulance. Anybody who has been unconscious for a length of time should get checked out and watched for a few hours afterward.
Adam - VAO Tasmania, Australia
on June 12th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
Yep - you were right to call an ambulance. Loss of consciousness needs to be investigated properly.
Besides - if he walked it was an easy job…
on June 12th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Maltese Parakeet - here’s a possible scenario for why the son couldn’t take her to hospital/go pick the lady up himself.
I am disabled and I sometimes fall and cannot get up. I always have my phone in my pocket for safety. In circumstances like these I would usually phone my mother, if nothing else for a bit of reassurance and company while waiting to be able to get up or to be picked up.
The last time I fell and hit my head and was in a confused state and couldn’t get up, my mother was 300 miles away, and she doesn’t have a car. There’s no way she’d be able to get to me, much less transport me to hospital. But I pretty much automatically speed-dialled her, and she was able to talk to me and could have called an ambulance to me if it had been necessary.
And I bet that if she had called an ambulance for me, and after two hours, I’d called her again saying “mum, there’s still no ambulance”, she’d have been going off on one as well.
on June 12th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
maltese parakeet - the irate relative was calling from the other side of London. I suppose he could have made his way over there, but he probably didn’t realise she was going to have to wait two hours, and if he didn’t have a car going all the way across London on night buses after an England match would probably get him killed anyway.
Catherine - you were definitely right to call the ambulance. You were very lucky to get one quickly, there were some horrible delays this weekend!
on June 12th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
Batsgirl - yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. The old lady originally called herself, and when the ambulance didn’t arrive she called her son. The son called us, applying the principle of “If I am really forceful and demand an ambulance now they will magic one out of thin air to send to her”. Sadly (well, sadly in this case) our calls aren’t triaged according to how forceful the caller is.
I do wish that we could automatically give a higher priority to anyone over the age of 65, though…
on June 12th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
My colleague was at a home birth on that day. When the birth was imminent the baby’s heart rate showed some suspicious features that the baby was in distress. They called an ambulance.
45 minutes later, a birth, baby born grey and needing resuscitation, baby successfully revived and all ok, an ambulance arrived.
Do I need to say more? :S
on June 12th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
And that would have been a Category A call. The old lady on the floor was a Green 2. If a life threatening emergency has to wait 45 minutes, you can imagine what happens with the non-life threatening calls. The situation with Doctors’ Urgents was even worse. “Within the hour” journeys were turning into “within a day”.
Hopefully the resource centre will pull out all the stops before the next match/hot weekend. And hopefully the next match and hot weekend won’t coincide.
on June 13th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Mark - why higher priority for over-65s? I’m not waiting 40 years for an ambulance, I dread to think how many newspapers will be delivered onto my head in that time (yes, this has happened).
on June 13th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Because in general elderly person calls are have more of a need for an ambulance than young person calls, and the same ailment can affect an elderly person more than it affects a young person. At the moment an old woman lying on the floor with a broken ankle, unable to get up, gets the same priority as a 20 year old man hobbling around with a broken ankle.
Not suggesting that ambulances should only be sent to the over 65s!
on June 13th, 2006 at 11:55 am
I was on call Saturday night and I needed to admit a really sick old lady. For some reason I couldn’t get through on the GP phone and had to call 999. I was held in a queue for AGES. I don’t mind because I know that I’m there and if there’s something needed at least I can do something (well maybe not but at least I’m actually present which helps the carers)… but I was thinking how stressful that would be for anyone else. And then I didn’t ask for a blue light because I couldn’t totally justify it, only for a “within the hour”, so she probably didn’t get to hospital for ages (and then she died within a couple of hours). Stupid football fans. Luckily I didn’t get called to any football related incidents otherwise I would not have been happy. the sooner we’re knocked out the better (don’t shout at me!)
on June 13th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
The GP line goes through to the same people as the 999 calls, so if all the call takers are busy on 999 calls, the doctors’ calls tend to stack up. I was gently encouraging doctors to blue light patients who really needed to be in within the hour (”sure you don’t need blue lights on that? Are you ABSOLUTELY sure?”) because the urgents just weren’t getting done at all.
on June 13th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Hmmm, yes I never know what to do. I have almost never asked for a blue light because I tend to think they should be left for the dying or nearly-dying, which I guess she was actually. I feel guilty asking for blue lights though. I should have had you on the end of the line!
on June 13th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Intreresting what you said there about GP urgents,geepeemum.
The opposite has happened with Merseyside.GP’s have lost the faith of within the hour and have started cajoling patients into chest tightness/difficulty in breathing.This really is due to the selfishness of some people after a free lift.I totally understand this kind of thing and only a culture change will reverse it.
At the end of the day,if a GP is admitting someone they must have a reasoning behind it.So therefore the patient gets to were they need to go.
If only ambo’s only did true emergencies this wouldn’t be necessary……
on June 13th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
thanks bats & mark. knowing that the relative was calling from another location certainly makes the story make much more sense. for some reason, when i first read it, all i could picture was this guy standing over his gran with the phone in his hand, just yelling away at you! i didn’t even think he might be calling from a different location. duh!
p.s. to mark, i really enjoy reading your blog.
on June 17th, 2006 at 6:47 am
Good God. 5000 calls? We get that many in a month. How many people do you have up there in Nee Naw? You people need to get the Victoria Cross for handling that much crap.
on June 18th, 2006 at 10:58 am
You people need to get the Victoria Cross for handling that much crap.
Yeah.
on June 21st, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Wow - very busy you were!!! on the first england match day - On a normal 24hr period we take about 500 999 calls.
Between 9pm and about 2am on that saturday there was about 600 - 999 calls. Then add the number of our other services, ambulance, fire, other police forces, motorways and then all our non - emergency public calls. which is about 1500 throughout the day.