Last night we had a call to a woman who’d fallen over and sprained her ankle. The location of the call was “sitting in a black cab”. Sitting in a black cab a mile or two away from the hospital on a busy Friday night. Why on earth did they call an ambulance? Surely the obvious solution here is to get the cab driver to drive to the hospital? They could have driven there and back twice in the forty minutes it took for an ambulance to arrive. I can only suspect the patient didn’t want to pay the fare, or thought she would be seen quicker arriving in a big white taxi as opposed to a black one.
It gets worse, though. The ambulance crew were on scene for about fifteen minutes and didn’t even take the patient to hospital. As soon as they had left, the taxi driver called 999 - potentially blocking life threatening calls from getting through - to moan about the attitude of the crew who attended.
I can only guess what the crew in question said - I think they probably echoed the sentiments of everyone in Control.
If the taxi driver ever does find the correct procedure to make a complaint, I cannot imagine the complaints department having a lot of sympathy. I wish we could make a counter complaint against him for making rubbish calls!