I like the first call of my shift to be something straightforward to ease me into it: perhaps a call from London Underground, an old lady fallen out of bed, or someone report that their father has chest pains. No such luck for me yesterday: the first call came through, and before the operator had even finished connecting the call I could hear a man ranting and raving.
“…dying! They’ve been waiting TWENTY MINUTES for an ambulance and he’s NOT BREATHING…. appalling… disgusting… RUDE WORD!… going to complain… sue…” was all I managed to make out of his diatribe. I calmed the man down a little and managed to piece the story together. His father-in-law had collapsed at another address and stopped breathing. His mother-in-law had called for an ambulance. A third, unspecified person on the scene had phoned my caller to tell him what had happened and that they had been waiting for an ambulance for this unreasonably long time.
So I looked up the original call. There it was: call received at 1958, details complete at 1959, ambulance dispatched immediately, well on its way, and sure enough, someone across the room was giving CPR instructions to the mother-in-law. What was the time now? Two minutes past eight. Yes, those twenty minutes were actually four minutes. I read the times out to the caller and he stopped in his tracks.
“Four min… oh, I’m sorry, yes, er, thank you, yes, sorry!”
I reassured him that the ambulance was nearly there and that the situation was in hand. I also told him it was perfectly understandable that the people with the patient thought they had been waiting longer. I’ve experienced this myself: a minute spent giving CPR to a patient can stretch on endlessly; sometimes I will look up at the clock at the end of a particularly dramatic call and be unable to believe so little time has passed. I’m sure the person who called him honestly believed that this horrible scene had lingered before them for twenty minutes, when really it was just the longest four minutes of their life.
November 9th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
I know I’ve been very lucky that I haven’t had time stand still in any serious sense. The closest I’ve come is computer support lines, where I would swear, absolutely swear, I’d been on hold for over half an hour. I timed myself once or twice. It was closer to ten minutes.
I wonder if there’s a study here for a cognitive psychologist.
Time on holiday: compression, perceived vs real: 1:10
reading the paper: 1:1
“support” lines & ordinary frustration: expansion 3:1
life-threatening, non-criminal: 10:1
life-threatening, criminal (eg being attacked): 20+:1 ?
November 9th, 2005 at 11:41 pm
Try to imagine how does time perception changes when YOU are working in the street. How time flies when you are trying an intubation or how it seems the clock acelerates when you dont find an address and someone needs ALS. Or how it seems to stop when there is ten minutes to the end of shift…
Interesting idea that of the cognitive study…
November 10th, 2005 at 11:30 am
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so…Douglas Adams
November 20th, 2005 at 1:12 am
It’s the same as standing at a bus stop for 5 mins can soon seem like half an hour.