Emergency Ambulance...

...what's the problem? Tell me exactly what happened. That's what I heard an awful lot yesterday. Let me explain a little.

Yesterday, myself, the Missus and a few guys from my group went to LAS control to have a look around, with the help of an EMD on the course, mentioned here.

It was incredible.
The room is divided into two sections, the call takers who take 999 calls and transfer requests, and dispatch the other side. London is broken down into sectors, each sector has its own desk for management. In addition to this is the FRU desk, they watch all the 999 calls come in and send a resource if they deem it appropriate. Lastly is the HEMS and biker desk, who again watch all the 999's come in and send help if needed. I never really understood how the bikes are tasked until now, they operate within a certain footprint of central London, and are sent if the dispatcher believes it will be beneficial for the patient to have early Paramedic intervention. This differs from the cars, as a lot of the time they're crewed by Techs as there simply isn't enough Paramedics to staff all the cars. The bikes have VERY loud sirens.

After staring in awe at the organised chaos before us, we were able to sit in with one EMD each and listen to the incoming calls on headsets. I was sat with a lovely lady named Helen. At first, which I was glad about, the calls were mostly transfer requests from wards and Doctor's urgents. First thing, they receive a lot more urgents than I thought they would. Also some of the injuries described by the Doctors sounded reasonably nasty, including an 80 year old lady who had a broken pelvis and arm, yet hadn't called for an ambulance. Another was a request from a ward to transfer a patient with Encephalitis. When Helen heard it she shot me a look of "what the hell is that?!", especially as they wanted a blue light transfer. Once the call had ended we looked it up in the medical dictionary, and discovered two things:

1. That Helen had spelt it right despite never hearing about it before
2. That Encephalitis is in fact swelling of the brain caused by a virus. Its actually quite rare and potentially lethal, obviously the nurse wasn't lying when she said she wanted a blue light run..

After a few requests to transport patients with various ailments, the 999 calls started coming.

My God.

People do not have a clue how to use the ambulance service. At all. In the slightest. A vast majority of the time most of the callers simply wanted a lift. There were two calls that stuck out to me as to genuinely needing an ambulance, one where a man was finding it so hard to breathe he could barely talk, the other where a girl had rang about her diabetic brother who was seemed like he was having a Hypoglycemic attack. The others were from reasonable nut cases, including a man who had banged his knee last night, decided that he had ruptured his ulcers, and wanted a wheelchair. He was sat in Euston station, and then proceeded to give us the most exact description of a person I had ever heard...right down to his army wings, explaining he was an ex-soldier. It also amazes me how most people seem to think throwing their entire medical history at the EMD seems to help matters, this guy starting talking about his GTN spray at which point both of our eyes lit up a little, but we both realised it nothing to do with the present call.

The one call that made me angry was the Hoax. This 16 year old girl gives a full address, contact number and name before starting giggling down the phone about her friend overdosing on something, before hanging up. The worst part was that Helen had to ring them back to confirm if they did or did not need an ambulance, which after some abuse to her they answered "No". Why do people do this?!

Well, while my calls weren't exactly nerve shredding stuff, it was typical that the Missus was sat the other side of the room listening in to every exciting thing happening in London, including a "suspended", where the EMD she was with was talking a man into how to give CPR, and a lady who was stuck in her car after trying to drive to hospital to give birth but started while on the way, in the driver's seat. Another call one of the guys got was a man who had a dog bite to the well, um er, you know..........ouch.

So after spending about 2 hours in EOC the EMD showed us round the ambulances and cars that were parked about. First we had a look inside the Zafira pictured below. It wasn't exactly reassuring that whenever the radio was pressed both the horn and blue lights came on.



The guys (excluding myself, the EMD and the Missus) in front of the dodgy car...

After that we had a look at a spare ambulance, prodding about in the back and front. It was very interesting, bigger than I expected too. I'm sure I'll have more time to dote on the interior details of ambulances later, so I won't bore you with it now.



(My first view from the cab of an ambulance in the passenger seat, I'll probably get bored of looking at it, but I want to savour the moment)

What a great day. I enjoyed myself so much, and sharing the experience with the Missus felt good too. She's now considering becoming an EMD as a career after Uni, bless her.

I learned an awful lot, about how useless the AMPDS system can be, how difficult it can be to understand what the hell people are saying, how stressful it can be, how much abuse EMDs get and how good it feels to hear someone who genuinely needs an ambulance get one. I now have the deepest respect for all EMDs, you guys do a fantastic job, despite having your hand's tied. So to Mark Myers at Nee Naw and Beaker at Not so Newbie at EOC, thank you so much for doing what you do, and despite all the crap you face everyday still being able to smile and be friendly. Cheers.


(This isn't the post all the swearing was about last time, I gave that up as a bad idea)