For some reason or other (omninous thundery weather? a proliferation of football?) we’ve had one of the busiest weeks ever. It’s been one assault after another. Maybe it’s because summer is over and people can’t sunbathe any more so they switch to killing each other instead. We had one incident where a man fatally stabbed his girlfriend then killed himself by jumping in front of a train, another when a man stabbed a woman and then, when the police arrived, started stabbing himself. A seventeen year old was bashed to death with a metal pole. Things came to a peak on Tuesday night when I was working on one of the busiest sectors and two crews pressed their priority button at exactly the same time. (Crews press their priority button when they want to “blue in” a patient - that is, they rush the patient in on blue lights and get us to warn the hospital that they are coming). I told the first crew to go ahead, but the second crew (not realising that the other crew had also pressed their priority button) thought I’d said the wrong callsign and started giving me the blue call. The trouble with our radio system is that when crews are talking, they can’t hear us or each other, so if they are both talking at once, there is no way to stop them. What I heard was this:
“This is G603… EC39… blue to the Royal Free with… the Royal London… sixteen year old male assaulted… multiple stab wounds to the chest and head… and back, was unconscious now GCS 14… ? arterial… blood pressure 110/80, pulse 94… blood pressure 84/60… 5mg morphine given… eta 6 mins…. and we’ll be there in 2 mins.”
In other words, a load of gibberish. I’m fairly good at multitasking, but there was no way I could separate these two out, especially as the calls were so similar.
“G603 and Ec39, you were both coming through at the same time. Did not receive you. EC39, standby please, G603, go again…”
“I said, this is G603, blue to the Royal Free with a 16 year old male assaulted, kicked in the head and…”
EC39 press their priority button again and talk over the top. “Sorry, I know you said standby, but our ETA to the Royal London is 1 minute…” G603, meanwhile, are still talking.
So in the end, the Royal London got the world’s sketchiest ever blue call and I ended up seriously cursing the people of East London for all attacking each other at once.
September 16th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
What would your opinion of crews passing their own blue calls directly to the hospital via their mobile phone. Would be a lot easier to convey to the recieving hospital what the main problem was.
September 16th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
I doubt that would work LAS NE, nurses dont listen to us when we are there in person let alone talking to them on the phone!!!!
September 16th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
The advantage of doing it through control is that it is a taped line, and also radios can be used hands free more easily than a mobile.
September 17th, 2006 at 12:56 am
In Essex we take care of our own ‘blue’ calls, its no problem with a mobile handsfree cradle, which most motors have. Can’t see any reason why a pre-alert needs to be taped.
September 17th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Beaker has also posted about the radio system and 2 priorities coming in at once, it’s seems odd that there is no way of stopping them while they are talking, although they can interrupt you? Are you due to be getting a cellular radio system similar to the police soon?
T
September 17th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Hello, everyone,
I’m a Belgian EMT and I recently discovered your blog, which I find really really very nice to read !!! When I read the comments above, I simply could’nt resist posting an answer on the Belgian way of dealing with pre-alerts …
In Belgium, emergency ambulances allwasy have to call in, every time we bring a patient to a hospital. Red call, amber call or green call, it does’nt matter: you have to take your radio and report the situation to the control room.
The funny thing about our Belgian way of doing things, is that the control room never takes any further action. The information from these situation reports we radio in, is carefully being put in the computer (just for statistics, I think). The hospitals don’t get any warning. A few years ago, they used to inform the hospital, but this procedure put too much pressure on the control room people, so they decided to stop giving information to hospitals.
This results in ambulances coming into hospitals on blue lights each day, without any warning to hospital staff. Obviously, the nurses somehow learned to live with it, because we usually see them reacting quit efficiently to any unexpected medical emergency arriving by ambulance.
So, in the end, the people who decided to stop informing the hospitals, proved to be right: There’s obviously no reason to do so !!!
Greets,
Paul
PS: My appologies for my bad English.
September 17th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
The reason the blue calls go through control is so they can be taped. The LAS like everything to go on tape, though as Jim says, I’m not sure how necessary it is in the case of blue calls…
Of course, if they didn’t go through control it would be bad news for this blog as I’d never find out how calls turn out unless I rang up every crew afterwards!
September 18th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Do you not have a Tetra system e.g. O2 Airwave?
September 18th, 2006 at 11:48 am
A what? Sorry, I don’t know what kind of system we have at all!
September 19th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Tetra/Airwave is slowly coming in but not expected to be in all services untill about mid 2007.
Our service calls in all pt reports for us to pass to the hospital, partly to give the hospital staff a fair chance but mostly for those “blue” cases where they need a doctor or team to meet them. If the worst happens and the media vultures start swooping about everyone has their backs covered by a recorded tape.
September 23rd, 2006 at 6:15 am
We have a system in use where each hospital’s ED/DS has an ambulance radio in it, when crews want to give warning of a critical or serious pt comming in they push a button on there radio that tell us thats what they want, we than tone call the facility they are heading to, their radio rings, much like a telephone, and the triage nurse answers message give by crew direct to hospital (no chance of a tired EMD missing something vitial)
and it’s taped for later play back (if needed)
October 13th, 2006 at 10:29 am
SAS have their crews passing their own with them calling them into control when they are clear where as NIAS like them to go through control. there points to both as more than once in SAS i had to call a crew bacik twice on the radio when passing a standby as the hospital kept thinking of new questions.