Every morning (or evening), when we arrive at Nee Naw Control, we check the manning list to see what we are doing that day. I will either be placed in Call Taking, or on one of the regional dispatch desks, manning the radio and/or the ambulance crews’ phone line. Everyone “belongs” to a particular sector, but if staffing is short, or you are on overtime, you may have to work on a different one. There are no sectors in call taking; calls from all over London come to the same place. Anyway, over the last two-and-a-half years I have managed to work on every sector for at least one shift. Except one: the FRU desk.

(FRU = first response unit, otherwise known as “ambulance car”, sent to all category A calls in order to reach them faster.)

Well, on Friday I got to work and found I was on the FRU desk for the first time! It was a bit like being a newbie again because there are all sorts of different procedures going on there that I had to be taught before I could do any work. There’s a new electronic dispatch system called FRED which, at the moment, is creating more problems than it solves, but which hopefully will reduce response times and our workload when it is fine tuned (though I hope it doesn’t work too well, or they won’t need us at all!!) All the FRUs have to ring up and give you their initials, hours and whether they are paramedics or technicians when they arrive. They keep in touch via mobile phones, and because they’re encouraged to stay in their cars rather than going to an ambulance station, and don’t have a crewmate, they tend to get a bit lonely and ring us up every ten seconds when they are not on a call, with queries like “How come I got seven jobs today and my mate in Woodford Green didn’t get any?” (me: “Because you’re in Newham, and that’s where all the accidents are, of course.”) Some of them even end up sounding like the psychiatric patients who call up in the middle of the night for a bit of a chat. I wouldn’t like to be a FRU, it sounds like it drives you a bit mad.

Because FRUs are sent to the highest priority calls, there is more drama on this desk than any of the others. Early on in the day, one was dispatched to a hanging. Soon after, he called up to speak to us:

FRU: “The patient’s purple plus (obviously dead and beyond help) - the crew and I are going off the road for a cup of tea, if that’s alright with you.
Me: Yes, of course. Are you alright?
FRU: Yeah, it was just a bit of a nasty job. It was a young man, and he’d hung himself from a canal bridge. He had photos of his children with him, and a suicide note addressed to his children. Bet that’s ruined their Christmas…

Half an hour later, the crew and FRU were back on the road, recovered and ready to take their next call. Got to marvel at the healing properties of tea…

Several suspendeds, a cot death, a collapsed wall, a stabbing and a one under later, there was a frantic call from another FRU, on his way to a pedestrian hit by a car in North London. He’d been belting down the main road on lights and sirens when another car (possibly rubbernecking at the accident he’d been sent to) pulled out in front of him, resulting in a high speed crash. This is an occupational hazard of FRU driving — because they are faster and smaller than ambulances, they are involved in more accidents. As he got out of the vehicle to call us, the engine suddenly went up in smoke. Within a few seconds the whole car was on fire. We arranged the fire brigade, the police, two managers, another FRU and another ambulance in addition to the one which had just been dispatched for the original patient. The entire road must have been filled with emergency vehicles. Fortunately, the FRU guy was not badly hurt, just incredibly shaken — thank god he got out the vehicle quickly. The same cannot be said for his vehicle, which was certified Purple Plus and towed away by the police.

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