Ex ambulance call taker/dispatcher

[CheekyFuckersDontGetPastMe]

I didn’t want to hijack the other police dispatcher/call taker thread.
AMA

Do you watch Casualty and associate it with calls you've taken?

Do you miss it? Is it a job you'd go back to?

Do you watch Casualty and associate it with calls you've taken?

No, I like casualty for the whole story lines and call taking isn’t like that, you just get a snap shot.

Do you miss it? Is it a job you'd go back to?

I don’t think I could do the shifts these days and I also have anxiety so no, I don’t think it would be healthy to go back but I do really miss it and I also know I could easily jump straight in and take a call, I’m great when my children call with minor medical dramas whilst at the park!

I still remember the voice of the call handler I spoke to when my son had a fit as a baby while my DH was in Afghanistan. I felt so incredibly alone and out of my depth until I heard that voice on the phone and clung to every word for support.
You're a pretty ace bunch of humans 😊

Aww thanks!

I still have all my thank you letters and cards, can’t imagine ever throwing them away.

How do you get into doing it? I'd love to do that job.

Carol I’ve just googled and London Ambo are looking?

I'm in London!

Carol have you applied yet?

How confident are you that you'd call for an ambulance and they'd arrive as quick as you needed given the pressures to the service now?

How confident are you that you'd call for an ambulance and they'd arrive as quick as you needed given the pressures to the service now?

From personal experience, after I left (never had the need to call whilst employed) I wouldn’t be confident at all.

I left many years ago and can only imagine things to be worse tbh.

I believe there are issues within the hospitals in regards to beds which cause a back log of queuing ambulances that have patients with no where to be handed over to so they can’t move on to the next call.

Add in poor pay, long hours, mental health, life work balance for crews and alike and then the obvious:;

www.facebook.com/officialwmas/videos/827280387315505/

Sorry it’s a fb link but it sums up what is an emergency or not for me. So many times have we had to send to people that really could have reached out further than 999 and left the critical calls waiting.

The amount of waster calls like above I’ve taken V Mr 87 yr old who has stayed on the floor all night because he/she didn’t want to bother us or cost them money was 50/50 that’s why you can’t charge for waste of time calls.

Great question WellAndTruly made me remember how passionate I still feel about it.

On a scale of how much do you had 111?

From working frontline 🚑 the amount of crap they send us to is one reason we are so bloody busy with inappropriate calls 😡

If a caller needs instructions on the phone eg how to clear choking/ deliver a baby/ use defib whilst awaiting ambulance, who gives the instructions? The usual call handler or are they transferred to a paramedic to talk them through what to do?

How much training did you receive around mental health?

themould we were trained as emergency medical dispatchers so we could handle all calls and had screen advice but we also had managers and paras who were on light duties to call on. After a few months of shadowin and then a few shift there wasn’t much I couldn’t deal with on the script before the crew arrived.

little none, we learnt very literally “on the call” I like to think things have improved now, we were always empathetic, so many awful calls, it soon became second nature to be there for the caller whilst the real help arrived.