To think that dd should have been a priority case?

[Edenviolet]

Dd2 has type 1 diabetes.

Last night she had a series of hypos which we treated and then another which would not respond to treatment. Her eyes were rolling and she was not fully conscious. We phoned 999 and thought they would come quickly.

We had to wait an hour and in that time phoned them back twice as she was so unwell. It was terrifying. We thought they would prioritise her or send a rapid response paramedic (the ones in a car not ambulance) but nothing. We were told they didn't know when somebody would be available.

When they finally came they took dd to hospital and she is now fine but when dh was there another child had just been taken in from an ambulance with earache, apparently the drs were not too happy and made this child go with his parents to wait in the waiting area but it mad me wonder how efficiently 999 calls are being prioritised.

I want to complain but I don't know who to contact. I am just so shaken up as took it for granted they'd arrive within minutes.

Have name changed so as not to out myself. I have just come off a run of five night shifts where we did 10 calls per shift so 50 calls, 5 out of the 50 really needed an ambulance the others could be fixed with OTC meds.

The problem is (apart from 111, in our area front line workload has gone up by 35% since it's introduction) is that many people know how to work the system, for example, someone with a blocked nose will say they are struggling to breath, this guarantees a red response. People with D&V are said to be 'not alert' and when you get there it's a perfectly healthy 20 year old with a tummy bug.

On a night shift there can be only one double manned ambulance and one car and I'm based in a very large town/city so even a car may not be available and when a car gets there they can wait an hour plus for a crew simply because we're on other calls.
We are constantly diverted from calls we are enroute to for supposedly higher priority calls which turn out to be not serious leaving the elderly on the floor for hours.

Call takers are not allowed to make common sense decisions, so if the caller (who is confirmed to be the patient) says they are struggling to breath while talking happily in full sentences the call handler can't downgrade the call.
And don't get me started on the toothaches, the 'I've run out of paracetamol' or the ones who live near the hospital and want a lift home. We can and do say no but still have to do checks and paperwork before we leave.

Rant over, but please do complain and write to MP's emphasizing the physical lack of ambulances.

I was in an embarrassing ambulance situation once where we really looked like time-wasters. DP had chest pain. He was in agony and he is NOT a complainer, he's very stoic. I called NHS direct and told them I thought it was a chest infection combined with a panic attack. They disagreed, and called an ambulance for us. We didn't even know until the first responder arrived. The paramedics hooked him up to a machine in the ambulance and it was clear that it wasn't a heart attack. At the hospital we were sent into the main waiting area and some registrar gave us a really hard time about calling an ambulance and didn't believe me when I said it was NHS direct. Luckily the doctor made me and DP feel much better when he said that you should never mess about with chest pain.
When I had to call an ambulance for DS, who had severe concussion, the paramedic said lots of elderly people in particular really apologise for wasting his time and he thinks it's terrible.

Complain to the idiots who abuse the service, like those with earaches!

Over here we have to pay to use an ambulance, even if your need is genuine. It can cost $600+ to get to use one, so most people have insurance that takes care of it.

It does stop the abuse on a large scale though.

I haven't read the whole thread but agree the ambulances seem to be overstretched. Waited for over an hour last year with my mother who had a major bleed. Fortunately I am medically trained and was containing it (with the help of my dc!!) but it was still scary having to phone them back again and again asking them to hurry. When the rapid response! car arrived he turned pale as he walked in on a gruesome scene and radioed in to tell them to get a move on. She was in hospital for 6 weeks had 4 blood transfusions and a heart attack as a complication. The paramedics were superb when they came just ridiculously overstretched, covering a vast geographical area and having to attend many, many non emergency calls. On reaching the hospital we saw plenty of people arrive by ambulance who really didn't need one but they couldn't refuse them in case it was a genuine emergency.

999issues, would the system be better with a better triage system? If the operators were allowed to make common sense decisions? So if they were able to say 'is the child struggling to breathe because they have a blocked nose?' or 'Can they breathe clearly through their mouth?'

I imagine it would put an awful lot of stress onto their (already stressful) role, but that it might actually help reduce the stress on the service?

Can I just say, I agree with fines for people who were just hoping for lifts home, or who say they're hungry and need pizza and so forth. But I think it would have to be managed in such a way that it didn't put of Mrs Wiggins, 92, who's fallen in her kitchen and can't get up, but thinks it's OK because Mrs Jones usually pops in on Tuesday.

Halfwildlingwoman we've been in similar situation. My GP advised me to call 111 if DD had 2 dry nappies and continued to refuse milk, she said they would send a doctor and they would advise me. If she was othetwise well i was advised against going to a&e as waste of time and miles away. So we explained about needing to see ooh GP, instead they sent an ambulance. Paramedic told us he'd been advised my dd was unconscious and unresponsive. They made us go to hospital in the ambulance. I felt like a right time wasting tit, but he said he had to take us it was the rules. Needless to say it was a waste of time and resources when we just needed a GP!

When i dislocated my ankle a couple of years ago the ambulance didn't even turn up. Had to get a taxi to the hospital with my leg the size of a football.

Yanbu but i think it's going to get worse with all the cuts to the NHS

I think it would be better with a more robust triage system but then call handlers would have to have some medical training which they would like but would cost more money.
In our area we can refer inappropriate 111 calls back to OOH but it still all takes time.
The 'best' 111 call out I attended was a young chap who was'dizzy' and thought that he 'might become unconscious'. The reason being he had drunk 10 cans of stella. That earned an 8 minute response time whilst the OAP on the floor with a fractured neck of femur waited over an hour whilst we checked the dizzy chap over and filled in a mountain of paperwork to say he was safe to be left at home.
The system is flawed but equally few people take responsibility for their own health now and it is getting worse.

I called 111 to get an out of hours appointment for DS with chest infection; they wanted to send an ambulance! Had to be put through to a clinician just so I could convince them I only needed a GP app and not the ambulance.

I think opening more drop in clinics is the way forward. Whilst it is totally inappropriate to request an ambulance for toothache etc, perhaps the people who do this would be less inclined to if there was greater 24 hour 'turn up and wait' acute care provided by nurse practitioners and GPs, rather than the traditional GP partnership model.

The thing is, we have a very good walk in centre in my area, open long hours and no need for an appointment but people still call 999 because, 'they can't get there' even if they live less than half a mile away with very frequent bus services and their condition is not bad enough to preclude them getting public transport.
Most of our calls come from the town centre area so not rural where transport may be more of a problem. I think that education from an early age is possibly the answer.
I live a 10 minute drive from a hospital and there are very few things I would call an ambulance for, if I lived 20 miles away the list would be longer.

I think that people who call an ambulance because they are hungry or have toothache should be given an ASBO. Surely that sort of behaviour is the very definition of anti-social?

Except that GPs or ooh won't treat dental problems. Which is why people turn up at a&e - because they either can't get an emergency dental appointment as they're like hens teeth, or they can't afford to pay the £18 appointment fee plus prescription charge.

I tried to get the gp at the drop in clinic to prescribe antibiotics for a recurrent wisdom tooth infection, but they refused, despite me being on the waiting list for oral surgery to remove the buggers. A little more joined up care would be helpful.

Maybe also some sort of patient transport provision, to get people to acute care facilities, or the labour ward etc. This would cost money but it would surely be cheaper to send a basic car and driver to get someone to a nurse practitioner drop in service, rather than a more expensive ambulance and paramedic to take someone to A and E.

Not that I'm justifying calling an ambulance for toothache!

Or the 'I've been smoking dope and now I feel funny' I may be naive but isn't that the point of dope smoking?
That comes through to us as an overdose from 111.

I don't know. A few weeks ago, I could have been that parent calling an ambulance for a child with a cold.

DS was suffering from a cough/cold. One night he woke up, and started wheezing and gasping for breath. I held him upright and after a couple of minutes he recovered. He has been fine since then, no further breathing problems but it was very scary at the time. Had the breathing difficulty lasted any longer, or if I had been a more anxious parent (and I had no other method of getting to A&E), I might well have been the parent who had called an ambulance for a child with breathing difficulties, which would probably have made DS a priority, only to arrive at A&E with a child with a bit of a cold.

It doesn't help that there's a misconception that if you arrive by ambulance you don't have to wait (as discussed on a recent thread) I think lots of people believe that this is true and call an ambulance for a minor issue as they think it will save them waiting in a busy A+E.

But you would have been right to call an ambulance if it had lasted. You did the sensible thing and held him upright, it is always more difficult to breathe when lying flat, he recovered so you didn't call.

it's really tricky.

I have no immune system and get very sick, very quickly.

After an uncomfortable week with 'backache' I ended up calling 111 in the early hours when I had developed extremely painful stabbing pains when breathing in, plus v high temp and such extreme shivers I dropped the phone several times.

In a and e, a nurse berated me for taking up an ambulance (not my choice) and a bed when it was pretty clear I had a bad cold.

I ended up on a ward for 10 days with the worst kidney infection the ward dr had seen, chest infection, ear infection (hadn't even noticed pain in my ears as everything else was so painful), sinus infection (same as ear).
I slept 23 hours a day for the first 4/5 days on iv abs.

The dr told me if I had left it until the drs was open, my organs would have likely started to shut down.

The nurse in a and e had asked me if there was anyone who could collect me and take me home with some paracetamol.

Bad medical advice can be both extremes and from any source.

Hope your dd is better op

Im not sure about fining people is the solution - the cost of even administering that would out way benefits. But I do feel strongly that a generation of people have grown up with the NHS and have little or no understanding of how much it costs in reality. So my idea is that you are told - your trip cost £200 , your medication cost £400, visit to GP cost £70 etc. You don't pay but have the understanding of worth.
Also I do find the insurance thing a red herring, you are still paying for the idiots who mis-use the service just through your premiums. In the US you are given loads of tests (not all necessary) because the insurance is paying it, but really you are all paying.

But it would have been so easy to panic in a situation like that. I was actually really calm but I could equally imagine just panicking and calling 999.

I called 111 to get a doctor's appointment as was a Sunday morning. They sent an ambulance, I said she does not need an ambulance, I can drive her to hospital she just needs a doctor. Ambulance turned up, agreed that 111 should not have sent the ambulance. What are you supposed to do?

My nephew was severely ill, high temp,fits, vomiting, it was really scary.

I luckily had my car and took him to the gp on an emergency appointment.

He made a miraculous recovery in the gps!

Yet I had taken his temp, his mum had cleared the vomit, it was clear that he was ill.

We explained this to the gp and he said its more common than you think

He said that sometimes the cold air helps.

The thing is......He was genuinely ill. My dsis would have called an ambulance for him, had I not been there with the car.

And to think all you judgy feckers will be sitting in a+e hoiking your bosoms, clutching your pearls and tutting at my sister because YOU think he wasn't ill enough..... You're willing to fine her for being so scared for her boy?