Today I called an ambulance.... and was put on hold

[Crunchymum]

About 4pm today I called an ambulance as my disabled almost 2yo had a severe allergic reaction (first time its happened)

I dialled 999, asked for ambulance, and got a recorded message telling me I was in a queue.

Hung up, called a cab instead.

Firstly, I was called back (approx 5 minutes later at most) and secondly whilst it was a severe reaction, breathing wasn't compromised. But what if it had been?

Maybe I'm part of the problem? I did make my own way to A&E (weren't admitted but needed steroids and more antihistamine) so should I have not called an ambulance to begin with?

A&E was as you would imagine. We were seen relatively quickly but took ages for meds and then discharge etc.

I'm appalled at how many people my colleagues deal with who demand an ambulance because theyve been in a fight and got a burst lip or have tripped and skint their knees. Weve got to the stage of saying no.

Its alarming how often cops end up giving up waiting for an ambulance and take an injured party to.hospital themselves. Believe it or not ambulance control regularly ask us to that. One day someones injuries are going to be made a hell of a lot worse because theyve been put in the back of a Police car rather than a. Ambulance.

How many people on the thread have said they were calling ambulances for drunks.

None.

And yet the thread has turned to berating people.

I was put on hold when I called 999 for police, for 12 mins.

Some people just like to moralise/ make excuses as to why things are bad / rather than accepting that sometimes things are not good and it is not the fault of the people who don't get responded to.

Because then they might have to do something about it.

Same mindset as people living rough have brought it on themselves why should anyone help etc

I don't want to live in a society where these attitudes prevail but they are getting more and more common sadly

You have to be very careful about putting out the message that ringing an ambulance for x is not acceptable because it risks putting people off calling when they really need to. It won't put off the pisstakers because they don't care, but it may put off someone else.

For example I said earlier in the thread that I called an ambulance when I was in labour and nobody answered for 5 minutes, it just rang and rang and rang. But that wasn't quite true. Someone else rang the ambulance for me because I wouldn't because I'd heard so many times how you shouldn't ring an ambulance if you're in labour, you should get yourself to hospital. But the circumstances were that I went into labour early while shopping on my own and my labour went from 0 to 100 in a nano second. I couldn't move and the paramedic had to peel my fingers off the post I was clinging to and physically drag me into the ambulance. It wasn't quick enough and only the lightening quick responses of the other paramedic behind me stopped DS crashing to the floor as he popped out. With hindsight it was absolutely the right thing to do to ring them, but at the time I wouldn't because I was so scared of getting into trouble.

Who is berating people? It is a well known fact that on Friday and Saturday nights ambulances and A&Es are stretched beyond capacity due to dealing with the after effects of drink. That’s not accusing the posters on here of calling for those reasons! It’s the reason genuine callers end up on hold and waiting dangerous amounts of time.

So why are multiple posters taking about our on a thread where no one has done this?

Like the pp it puts people who don't want to stretch the service of ringing when it's appropriate too. It is totally out of context of the things that people have been telling about.

Sorry on phone spelling terrible hope you get gist.

People need to understand there are consequences to what they say.

I initially started the thread as I was just so surprised to be put on hold? I appreciate there can be huge wating times for ambulances but I'd never known or heard of being put on hold before even speaking to the operator? Fair enough if it was ascertained that the patient is alive / breathing / not bleeding out etc and then you are put in a queue? I absolutely don't know what I'd have done if it was a worse situation. Of course I see the irony that had my call been taken, I could have been denying someone in greater need..... it's a weird one.

Sadly it doesn't seem to be uncommon - I was hoping I'd get a load of replies saying it was unheard of in their experience.

What is the fix? 111 isnt fit for purpose in my experience. Last time I rang it, they sent an ambulance

Obviously 999 isnt the place to triage patients and decide if an ambulance is actually required but there has to be some middle ground?

I also think fining people who call for ridiculous reasons should be fined awaiting people telling me I should be fined

12 mins to get through to police on 999 when a teen girl was getting beaten up.

Not great.

@Crunchymum they do fine people who repeatedly call for ridiculous reasons and block their numbers if they carry on after that

The OPs son isn't even 2 years old and is disabled. OP needed to learn CPR before taking him home from the neonatal ward. He obviously has some complex medical needs and OP said he hadn't had an allergic reaction like this before. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we know he didn't really need an ambulance.

People such as the OP are not the problem. The problem is a combination of spending cuts and people who call for ambulances when they know deep down they don't need one.

I had no idea they put people on hold. The one time I called the ambulance ( actually 111) about my 10 day old dd, they sent the ambulance.

However I know someone who had a car accident around Christmas and it took 2 hours for the ambulance to arrive: they were left in the middle of the road to be comforted by strangers and blankets

I rang the police when I found out a crime happened in my area. I have cctv on my house and spotted said ‘offender’ in my cctv. I waited 25 minutes (hung up) to specifically speak to someone, then realised they had a messaging service ‘you have a one minute wait’ 15 minutes later... well fuck of then...

Can’t bothered.

Tbh, if I had an emergency situation I’d get in my car and drive them to A&E. But, I know not everyone has that luxury.

Thanks @Huggybear16

With regards to CPR, all parents had to attend the workshop and be signed off.

But yep baby isn't NT, is still very little and I'm a lot more of a novice with her, despite her being DC3. Kids with her condition usually do not present with a temperature until very poorly / can walk around with broken bones due to high pain threshold. So I will always err on the side of caution with her.

Yeo it's common. Though why on earth were you trying to use emergency services in this situation?

To some degree there is a postcode lottery in place. The aim set is that all calls should be answered within 2 minutes (and I fully appreciate 2 minutes is an awfully long time in a life threatening situation) for example in September the best performing ambulance service in the UK had 25 over 2 minute delays, where the worst performing had 888 over 2 minute delays. I do not have access to the figures showing how far over 2 minutes those delays were.

There is an abuse of the system, google will easily provide you with numerous cases of callers that call thousands of times a year, but this in my honest weary opinion is because that person is suffering from a gap elsewhere in the system and the ambulance service has become the plug to those many gaps. We are no longer seen as an emergency life or death type service. We are called to care and nursing homes where they have instigated no lift policies for their staff so the residents must remain on the floor until an ambulance crew picks them up. We get called to mental health patients that need longer term care and support networks in place but because they can't access them they run out of options and call an ambulance.
We regularly go to patients in labour, and I don't mean life threatening or fast labour, women that from day dot plan to call an ambulance rather than a taxi or a family member. It's a common occurrence to find multiple cars on the drive and family members bemoaning their wait but advise they will follow up in the car.

OP you in my opinion are not a part of the problem and your call to me would have been one of my higher priorities on the screen.

The sad truth is I regularly sit with no resources available and over 100 patients across the region waiting for an ambulance for over 2 hours. The stress we are under is huge. These people then call back to query where their ambulance is, so each patient that's waiting may well place 4 or 5 calls chasing an ETA, this obviously also adds to the pressure on the call assessors as whilst they are re triaging the patients condition they cannot be answering the call regarding the patient we do not yet know about.

To debunk an earlier post though we absolutely do not know from the operator what you are calling for, there is no way of them pushing your call to the front of the queue.

Sorry that was long.

@3littlemonkeys82 it may have changed - but I was a call handler for a decade and twice the BT operator called the centre and said they had a call in the queue that needed processing now and it was passed through to us. Again it could be just a savvy operator or local to the region
It was effectively the equivalent of a red phone

@Lotus90

You don't need to be so rude. If you read the thread, my decision / actions are explained.

And ultimately I didn't use emerge services, did I?

• emergency

@ClientListQueen I'm not sure how long you've been out of the service, but as I'm sure you're aware demand has increased massively, in the last ten years we have gone from around 1200 cases a day to easily pushing 4500 (and winter pressures havent started yet) the initial operator is not trained to triage a call at all they literally ask which service you require, you do not have the opportunity to tell them what is wrong, your call is then put straight through to that service. There is no work around to that. No priority line. No red phone. There many years ago was a direct line for things like airport alerts but not any more. You call 999 you get put in the 999 queue. The only different number is for drs urgent cases (transport within 4 hours) those calls always sit at the back of the queue until all 999 callers are answered.

@3littlemonkeys82

Thank you for the insight, it is really good to hear from people on the front line. I'm just so saddened that your job is so hard because of the lack of resources (and ultimately funding!!)

I didn't realise the situation with mental health / care homes. Sad and worrying times.

The examples you give about women in labour is just shocking!!! Again I had absolutely no idea.

What do you think about 111? If you dont mind me asking?

You should do an AMA @3littlemonkeys82

My elderly ndn was v unwell while suffering cancer treatment a few christmases ago. Her DH called an ambulance and they waited 5 hours for it.

@3littlemonkeys82 well aware of the demand! It changed massively over the decade I was there
I've only been out 2 years. The situation was a caller shouting at the operator that their baby wasn't breathing. The operator rang control manager. Manager came over and said when you have finished that call, don't go available, we are transferring a call to you (explained the situation) and the call was put through

@flowerstar19 I agree very scary. We have the tories to thank for a decimating emergency services.