Why are 999 call handlers like this?

[NotADailyMailJournalist]

Hello

I came across a man collapsed and bleeding heavily from a head wound in the street today. Literally a thick puddle of blood. I slammed a folded, fabric shopping bag on the wound to stem the bleeding.

Me: Hello, I've found a collapsed male, conscious but with heavy bleeding
Call Handler: what age is he? Do you know his name? Did you see him fall?
Me: 60-ish maybe, not sure on name, Davie he says, maybe, no I didn't see it happen. Is the ambulance on its way?
Call Handler: YOU NEED TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS, LISTEN TO ME! Further questions about when did this happen etc etc.
Me: he's very distressed, can I tell him the ambulance is coming?
Call Handler: FINALLY says ambulance is on way.

Speaking to friends, they say this is common. Why can't the call handler just say "it's ok, ambulance is on way, answer these questions in the meantime"?

Thanks

They need to know what's happening.

They deal with so many agitated, rude and downright hateful people that they can't be all sympathetic. Imagine some of the things they hear? Awful accidents, stabbings, people who have just lost loved ones. If they got emotionally invested in every single call, they'd quit after a day.

They need to know the facts, quickly, so that they can get ambulances out to the people who need them

Surely if the call handler's priority is the injured and potentially bleeding out to death patient, they'd spend less time assessing and more time dispatching an available ambulance? This is what happens when a service is badly run. Time is of the essence in an emergency. I can see why callers get agitated. It's bad enough when the accent is a challenge to understand. I've never had to call the emergency services, but now I know to paint the full picture down to how many times the patient took a dump that week. Sorry for the sarcasm, but sometimes it's warranted.

That would only work if there were a magical, limitless number of ambulances available. Sorry to lift the rock you must live under, but that is not the case.

It's bad enough when the accent is a challenge to understand. What point are you making here? You have never called the emergency services.

They can't tell you that though until you've answered all their questions and they've decided who is priority, though, can they.

Called the other week gor someone who could barely breathe I told them upfront that I was not with this person i was 20 miles away with another sick person (at the hospital ironically) they kept asking if his lips were blue.....like I'm not with him? Then she said can you bring him in yourself again I'm not with him I'm in hospital with someone else well it would be easier if you went to get him yourself we can take an hour lady in this traffic it would take me an hour plus I don't have medical experience or oxygen both of which he needs

Then when I finished with dealing with the person I was with (two hours later) I asked A&E if they had him they did not and neither did our other A&E so I thought they hadn't taken him at all and he was left collapsed on the floor fortunately they had just gone rouge and took him out of area but fucking hell it was hard trying to find him

I strongly reccomend phone trackers on your elderly parents phones because without Google location I would never have found him until he had the breath to call

I'm surprised by the number of posters who are unaware of the call handling procedure. But I guess it depends what type of TV you watch - there are at least three long-running factual TV programmes on mainstream channels about the ambulance service

But on these programmes, the call handler does appear to say "Help is on its way" very early in the call; programmes like these might actually be part of the problem because for editorial reasons (brevity, not transmitting identifying information) the scenes are heavily edited, making it appear that ambulances are dispatched with minimal information.

Op I think it sounds like you were in a bit of a panic when you phoned, I imagine they get a lot of panicky people phoning 999 and they have to get accurate information. If you've ever been in hospital you will know that they repeatedly ask you the same questions about injuries or conditions because often as people calm down they will give further details or....in a less panicked state things might not be quite so bad. Once I was I was running with a club a lady tripped and cut her leg and it was bleeding, another runner immediately panicked at the sight of the blood and started shouting that we needed to call and ambulance. It wasn't an ambulance worthy injury. Not saying the man with the head wound didn't need an ambulance but just that the call handlers need to work out what's going on and get the best service to you.

I wouldn't call that a waste of time, that could cause a serious pile-up. I would call ringing 999 rather than the community team about being able to swallow meds, and to remove a cannula, a waste of their time though, that's shocking.

This. You can’t be saying oh that’s awful are you ok don’t worry I’ll send someone straight away. That’s not what they are there for. It’s must be a very distressing job at times, structure and a process are necessary for you and for them. Other posters are right, they don’t care about the caller that’s not their job.

it’s probably like listening to a pilot talking to ground crew , factual unemotional even more so when the plane is crashing.People are taking it personally (understandably) but it’s not about you. They aren’t there to comfort you. If you listen to them when they have a child on the line with an unconscious parent they are very different.

It’s not inappropriate to have feelings or need to tell the story to make sense of an unexpected and shocking situation. The OP isn’t a robot.

It’s clear the OP is benefiting from those who can contextualise the response from the call handler and that’s helping them gain a more nuanced and helpful understanding of what they experienced.

Even someone who has been “stabbed in the chest” may have been stabbed in the shoulder/throat/stomach/heart. A distressed caller might use a shorthand phrase to start.

The knife may barely have gone in or be buried deeply. It might be a pen knife or a carving knife. Etc.

They need the info.

I had to call in an industrial accident a few years ago - someone was trapped in some machinery - and the call handler kept insisting I needed to shut the equipment off. It didn’t matter how many times I told her that 1. I didn’t work there and had no clue how to shut it off, and 2. The man trapped in it was the engineer and was telling me that if we cut the power the machine would reset and rip his arm off - she refused to go any further until I would confirm I’d done it, and I obviously refused to do it, and it wasted a good 10 minutes whilst this man’s arm was half off.

It's an under resourced public service handling emergencies.

It's not a customer service hotline.

I appreciate that you were upset but your feelings are not their priority. Getting information out of you so that they can direct the correct response to the injured person is.

I have no problem with them assessing the situation and asking questions, they have to. What I do have an issue with is the way they ask- if you ask calmly rather than aggressively you are more likely for people to reduce their panic and give you the actual info. Thats basic psychology and I am surprised they dont have more training on this. I've had to ring them a few times and they talked to me like I was a piece of dirt on their shoe. It actually made me feel more stressed in the moment.

If they got emotionally invested in every single call, they'd quit after a day.

That. Can you imagine how many calls like this they take in a day? And how traumatic some of them are? Then they put the phone down and have to answer another one.

The questions they have to ask are robotic for a reason. It keeps them calm and factual and focused on information gathering, rather than caught up in the panic and distress of others.

I can't imagine how stressful and emotionally draining it is to do that job.

I have called for a few ambulances and one of the main problems I have had was not knowing the postcode of where I was.

I gave the name of the place and the name of the main road it was on,eg once it was at a children’s play barn but they just kept asking for the postcode. What do you say if you don’t know it!

One person’s calm and distant is another person’s “piece of dirt on the shoe”

Call handlers are human too. If they have just got off talking through a call with a parent whose child is dying, they may need to be even more detached from the next caller to make it through.

Your worst thing that you have ever seen may be number 72 on their experiences for the month.

Call handlers are human too. If they have just got off talking through a call with a parent whose child is dying, they may need to be even more detached from the next caller to make it through

Yes, I am aware of that, I worked on a psych ward for many years. No problem with being detached, but thats not quite the same as aggressive and rude is it? It actually makes their job easier if everyone is as calm as possible.

I’m fine with the questions, and the delay. When my mum died though I rang for an ambulance. When I rang back an hour later to say she was dead the call handler said that I was to call them back if her condition changed. Well no. Pretty sure she would still be dead..

I used to be a call handler for the Police. The second people phoning thought the Police were on their way, they would hang up without telling you anything.

IME from then, the ambulance also have a script. We didn't. But we still needed to ask questions. The amount of people who phoned saying something was an emergency when it wasn't was ridiculous.

That must have been really really horrible op and you must be really shaken. I hope you feel better soon

Asking the questions does not delay the response, the call taker does not 'order the ambulance' the process starts from the moment the call is answered. Age, reason for fall/collapse is very important. I work in a control room as a clinician so hear a lot of calls, some do verge on the aggressive but if the the last few calls you have taken start with the words'get me an ambulance you fucking cunt' then it's abit difficult to switch immediately especially when you earn a pittance for getting masses of abuse every working day.

Just on your last point, this doesn't really surprise me sadly. I hope you're never in this situation again, but I remember back in the lifesaving classes I did as a late teen, being told to assign people specific tasks. I.e. "you in the red coat, I need you to call an ambulance", "you with the hat, can you go to that shop and see if they have a first aid kit" or whatever.

Apparently as well as the people you ask being more likely to help, it just broadly creates a "hey everyone this is something I need help with" situation and makes people more likely to step in.

I have had people lean over me in a tesco's aisle to get something off the shelf whilst giving me a glare...... while I was doing CPR on a patient! There are some absolute wankers out there!!

Agree, I called in for a collapsed elderly man, they insisted on asking me about 10 separate questions about his medical history even though I kept saying I was a passer by and had no idea. It was like talking to a robot.