A large percentage of what us Nee Naw Controllers were taught back at Nee Naw Training School wasn’t about helping patients. A lot of it was about not letting the ambulance service get sued. For instance, when we talk to a caller we are not supposed to say the word “ambulance” (we must be the only company in the world where you are not allowed to mention the name of the thing you provide), because this increases the caller’s expectation that they will get an ambulance, as opposed to a car, motorcycle, helicopter or a call from the Telephone Advice Service. Another thing you are not allowed to do is tell them how long they will have to wait (for reasons I will come to). This makes some phone calls a bit like that childhood game where you have to talk about something without mentioning the name of the thing. For instance:
“Lock away any family pets, get together the patient’s medication, unlock the door and get someone waiting outside to meet the, er, um… thingy”
“Are you sending an ambulance or what?”
“Help will be with you as soon as possible!”
“Help will be with you as soon as possible” is supposed to be our answer to anything like that. I feel sorry for the callers when I say this, because what they really want to hear is a precise rundown such as “right, the ambulance is now leaving Islington ambulance station, it’ll be with you in three minutes and twenty one seconds”. The reason we can’t say this is because the ambulance might get stuck in traffic, break down, or be rerouted to a higher priority call, and if I tell a caller that an ambulance is three minutes away and none materialises, then I’ve lied, and that caller is quite free to sue me. (And yes, it would be me, not the Ambulance Service, because by telling them that, I would have broken protocol).
A few weeks ago, I got a call from a posh, intelligent-sounding man whose father had just collapsed, unconscious and not breathing. My job as a call taker was to take the details and get the man performing CPR until the ambulance arrived — someone else upstairs on dispatch would be sorting out the ambulance. This man would not accept the stock placitudes of “help will be with you as soon as possible” and “talking to me will not delay the ambulance”, and wasn’t going to listen to anything I said until I said that the ambulance was definitely 100% on its way. He had picked up on the fact that I wasn’t going to state an ambulance had been sent, and interpreted it as me saying one hadn’t been sent. At the time, this information wasn’t available at all to call takers, the only way to get it was from the supervisor, which I did, putting the man on hold for a few seconds. By the time I came back to him, the man was furious, panicking, and ranting (ironically) about sueing the ambulance service, and any attempts to get him to perform CPR were futile. I couldn’t help but think, if I had been able to tell him how far the ambulance was to begin with, maybe I’d have got him to do as I asked.
The reason I bring this up now is because things have changed. The log which shows if an ambulance has been dispatched and how long it will be is now visible to call takers. But the protocol is still not to give this information to callers, at risk of being sued. Personally I’d prefer to say something like “the ambulance will be with you in six minutes, unforeseen circumstances permitting”, just to set the callers’ minds at rest.
I don’t blame the ambulance service for this; I understand they’re trying to cover their backs (and ours). I just think it’s sad that the “sueing culture” makes us scared to do something which would be beneficial to so many people.
October 4th, 2005 at 3:23 pm
If you were to say “An ambulance will be with you in 6 minutes” and it then gets stuck in traffic, or rerouted, what exactly can they sure you over?
Raising hopes? Giving false information? Breach of Promise?
October 4th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
According to the First Aid Manual, the caller should always ask ‘How long the ambulance will be’ then report back to the first aider. The idea is that some first aid treatments depend on if the ambulance will be five minutes or ages and ages.
Seems we should re-write the book, again..
One thing I’ve found at incidents - I completely lose track of time so if you tell me five minutes and its twenty I won’t notice.
October 4th, 2005 at 6:52 pm
Heh, yes — I’m a member of St John Ambulance and at every training course they teach you to ask how long the ambulance will be… you’d think by now they’d notice that the call taker never answers the question.
I have no idea what they’d be able to sue us for. The Training Department did rather put the fear of god into us over it, so we were scared to ask. I think it’s something to do with false information, though, and “creating expectations”… although I’m pretty sure that 99% of ambulance callers expect one to turn up pretty sharpish without being told anything!