Two summers ago, after a two day induction at Millwall football ground, where we watched a lot of slide shows and not any football, I started at Nee Naw Training school. This takes place at our back up control centre in Bow, which is in the middle of an industrial estate and a long way from civilisation, but much nicer and shiner than Nee Naw Control proper.

The course went something like this (this is off the top of my head and is going back a couple of years, so is a bit sketchy in places. Apologies for any inaccuracies.)

First couple of days: Stuff like fire regulations, who to ring when you are sick, how many pips a team leader has on his shoulders, etc etc. Not terribly fascinating stuff.
Four days: First aid course. A bit like the St John Ambulance First Aid At Work course, covering bandages, slings, CPR, positioning, drawing diagrams of hearts on the blackboard, basic treatment for sunstroke, hypos, that sort of thing.
Second week: A bit of stuff about how to calm down hysterical callers (although this is something you really have to learn “on the job”), how to avoid being sued, what you are and aren’t allowed to say (eg. “do not use the word ambulance”), etc. Followed by course on AMPDS (the priority dispatch system used to triage the calls).
Third week: General stuff about what information you need to get for different types of locations and calls. Eg. if it’s a block of flats, get which floor it’s on. If it’s the Fire Brigade calling about a fire, as how many pumps. If it’s an airport, is it landside or airside. And so on. There are lots of different types of call, so this goes on forever. Also included in this bit is how to take bookings for doctors’ urgent and non-urgent calls.

There is an exam at the end of each bit and we needed 80% to pass. I think there were resits if you failed, but I am obviously not as thick as I look and got through.

Next came a period of “consolidation” in the room. I started out by listening to a more experienced member of staff take calls, then typed as she talked, then talked as she typed, then talked and typed as she listened. If I started to look bewildered, she’d mouth instructions at me. After fourteen shifts of this, I was signed off and given permission to go it alone.

After a couple of weeks getting used to call taking, it was back to Training School for the Dispatch Course. (As I’ve mentioned before, the room is split into two halves, with the call takers downstairs and dispatch desks upstairs. Each dispatch desk contains a dispatcher, a radio operator and an allocator. New people are not allowed to be radio operators or allocators). The dispatch course was very long winded when I did it - I believe they’ve now cut it down to a week. Most of it was learning how to fill out the pink, orange, green and yellow forms we have to fill out every time an ambulance does something. I initially found dispatch very tedious because I seemed to be drowning in paperwork all the time and not really doing anything ambulancy. Once I got my head around the paperwork, it was far more interesting as I got to chat to the crews, sort out problems, liaise with the police and keep an eye open for potential blog entries!

After a year alternating between dispatch and call taking, I was allowed to take to the radio. This is where I now spend the majority of shifts. There was no return to training school for this; one of the more experienced radio operators taught me as I went along. I made a few guffs in my first couple of weeks, for example on my first day on the radio I pressed a button and said “Can all the ambulances hear me if I press this?” and all the ambulances replied “yes, we can”. Another time I accidentally said “load of rubbish” over the air and was chastised for sounding unprofessional. I’ve got the hang of it now, although I have a tendency to say “over”, indicating that I have finished talking, and then remember I have something else to say. Also, sometimes I get home from work and forget I am not on the radio and say “Roger that” and “Red base out” to real life people who look at me like I am mad.

I am not allowed to be an allocator yet because I have not been there long enough, and with any luck by that time I will have passed my stinking rotten driving test and be allowed out on the road.

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