What, in your opinion, deserves an ambulance call out?

[Drizzledrozzle]

Inspired by another thread, what level of pain / injury / personal circumstances deserves an ambulance call out?

In my own recent experience I'm aware of my gran who calls an ambulance most days because she's confused and gets some shortness of breath.
IMO she should not be calling an ambulance, but she's alone and frightened and clearly calls them as a safety mechanism. She also calls police, fire and the gas board most days, as well as my dad x30 a day and myself once or twice. She's shortly being moved into residential care which will be a great relief to her local emergency services. However if she didn't have family / resources to pay for the care what is the answer?

My partner had a virus and while walking across the kitchen he suddenly collapsed. He didn't lose consciousness but was unable to get up, and I had two small children I was looking after so couldn't give him much care or attention or time, so I called 999. I think the shock of him collapsing made me unable to think straight.
They triaged him by phone, told him to get himself to a sofa as soon as he could, and they'd drop by when they had a moment but they wouldn't consider him a priority.
He ended up being taken in that night when they arrived with suspected meningitis. Thankfully he didn't have it and recovered soon after

When pregnant with DC1 I had a single drop of blood appear and again I freaked out and called 999. They kindly told me I didn't need an ambulance and to keep an eye, stay comfortable and get to an EPU in the morning. All was luckily fine.
I very clearly shouldn't have called 999, but no ambulance came and I only wasted 5 mins of phone time.

I don't want a critique of all my experiences, I'm sure it would be searing! But given some posters seem to think you need to be actually in cardiac arrest before you can even consider calling 999, where is your line?

with 70 million of us and infrastructure for 50 million:

• take a first aid course. Basic ones are often free. Even if you are not physically able to participate the knowledge is useful

• take on board the criteria for calling an ambulance

- keep a basic first aid kit - make an effort to have enough CASH (repeat CASH, not fragile phone credit on a device that may lose charge, not a card on a bank network that may go down) in the house and on your person for a taxi to your nearest hospital at all times.

as noted there is nothing wrong in calling for advice.

don't get pissed and think ahead for transport for a normal birth. Obviously a pregnancy emergency is different.

I called an ambulance when dd dislocated her kneecap. I couldn't move her to get her to the car. It was absolutely horrific. Ambulance arrived and immobilised her leg before giving her gas and air to get her into a chair thing.

Oh - when she fell and dislocated and broke her elbow we took her to A&E in the car.

@toothtrauma the only time I have been in an ambulance was when I collapsed at a bus stop. When I came round I spent ages apologising to the paramedics that a lady who saw me collapse had called them. Then I lost consciousness again and went blue. It turned out to be a heart problem.

It almost certainly wasn't you who called for me (what are the chances), but thank you anyway

*I wouldn’t call a ambulance for a broken bone unless it’s a back or a skull

You can sit in a car with a broken arm and be taken to hospital*

But you can't get into car without a wheelchair for some broken bones so what a silly thing to say.

In the last few years I've called an ambulance for:

• Colleague with severe chest pains who was already on medication for a heart problem and had been told to ring 999 if any chest pain while he waited for an op. Ambulance took 1.5 hours to arrive as none available - they had to send one from 50 miles away.

• Colleague whose partial knee replacement snapped off the bone when she tried to stand up (OUCH). She didn;t know that's what had happened she just couldn't move and was screaming in agony. Yes in theory she could have gone to A&E in a car, but how would we have got her out of her chair, carried her down 5 flights of steps and got her into a car when huge doses of morphine and gas and air did nothing?

• Badly scalded child. In hindsight I panicked and possibly they didn't need an ambulance. But the paramedics said I did the right thing as they had burns sheets with them to stop scarring. A delay while I somehow got a taxi with a screaming child would have meant serious scars/skin grafts.

It's not really the people who panic over an actual serious illness/accident and ring 999 instead of driving/getting a taxi that are clogging the service up though. It's the ones phoning repeatedly because they're lonely or have serious mental health issues and the entitles ones demanding ambulances for a broken finger that are doing this.

I once had to call an ambulance to get my ds to the hospital for an ultrasound/xray. I felt so awful calling an ambulance, but he couldn't walk and was 16, so I couldn't carry him and in any case, even if I could have gotten him to the car, he couldn't be in a sitting position (excruciating pain). I called multiple people (doctors and insurance company - we're in the usa) and the general consensus was that in order to get him to have the tests that he needed (we were pretty sure what was wrong with him, as he'd had it before, but needed an ultrasound and xray to rule out anything more serious), the only way to transport him was in an ambulance. Luckily, it did turn out to be the inflamed hip joints that we thought it was, and he was bed ridden for 5 weeks.

Unfortunately, pain in itself isn’t life threatening, nor is being on the floor and unhurt but unable to get up by yourself

@purplewithred my elderly aunt was found collapsed and hypothermic on the floor by her home help; she was bluelighted but pronounced dead eventually at A&E after trying to revive her. Had she been by a telephone but still unable to move when she fell or possibly came round sometime in the 12 hours before she was found, she wouldn't have been justified in calling an ambulance?! Because falling in the hall away from a telephone cost her her life. She had no injuries, just too weak to get up, and she died from it.

Likewise, the OP in the recent thread who wasn't able to move for two days is currently in hospital being treated for sepsis.

I’ve only called an ambulance once and it was for a pedestrian hit by a van. Huge bang and she went flying and was lying unconscious in the road, shopping bags scattered all round. Then by the time the ambulance got there 10 minutes later she was sat up, putting her shopping back in her bags and telling us off for making such a fuss Still feel like it was the right call at the time, though.

Drunk people are not ill their drunk

The Navy taught us never to assume that someone is simply drunk, even if they are stinking of alcohol as head injuries can mimic drunkeness. Only a doctor can pronounce drunkenness. No gangway sentry will take that decision but call for a medic. What if someone had spilled a drink down them, then they had slipped and hit their head on their way home?

In addition, a naval drunk must be monitored, usually by a sober colleague to ensure that they do not vomit and choke, or that the doctor hasn't got it wrong and they deteriorate.

TooManyPaws agreeing with you. Just to add that that once going past the pub, i waited with a husband of a lady who was drunk acting and babbling. When the ambulance came, they took her to hospital as shd was near unconscious. She had only had a couple of drinks but was diabetic.

@53rdWay I really hope they took her in or checked her at least. Some injuries hide due to shock and the patient can deteriorate very rapidly. (Look at Richmond Hammond and his brain injury)

The Navy taught us never to assume that someone is simply drunk, even if they are stinking of alcohol as head injuries can mimic drunkeness

Wish someone had taught that to the nurse at my uni's health centre. We took a friend in there because he'd tripped and fallen on some concrete steps, knocking himself out briefly. Because he'd had a couple of drinks and she could smell beer on him, she actually told us off for bringing him in and said to take him home and let him sleep it off! Thank god a housemate decided to sit up next to him all night, as he vomited due to his skull fracture at 4am. He'd have been dead if we'd taken that nurse's advice.

I do when my youngest needs breathing help but for the most part it is quicker going through out of hours.

DDIJ you wouldn't call an ambulance if your child was unconscious? How ridiculous to say you wouldn't call an ambulance for anything, if that's true then it's a massive safe guarding issue.

I've been taken to hospital by ambulance twice. The first time the GP called an ambulance as I had a suspected brain haemorrhage that turned out to be viral meningitis.

The second time was for a nose bleed. Yes a nose bleed!! It had been ongoing for an hour flooding out with huge clots, when I started bleeding out of my eyes my teen son called 111 who decided to send an ambulance. I was taking to hospital for it cauterised. Turned out to be the side effects of a medication I was on.

I called when one of my DC’s broke an arm. It was visibly displaced, I had a small child with me and was unable to safely transport DC to hospital 40 minutes away.

In other circumstances I have taken DC’s with fractures and even drove a broken leg up one night, but on the above occasion an ambulance really was the only way for me to get the DC to hospital ASAP. It was an operation and metal work in the arm situation and no way could I have driven, supported DC and looked after a toddler.

That’s the only time.

I've never had to dial 999, but have had ambulances sent twice after 111 have triaged my son when he had breathing difficulties. The first time he really didn't need an ambulance and they were able to assess and get an urgent GP appointment for him.

This week same thing happened and they insisted they sent and ambulance much to my protests that I was happy to drive him up to A&E. I'm so glad they did as during the 15 minute wait for them to arrive he went from bad to worse and was fighting for his life. I was scared I was going to lose him. Due to their swift actions they were able to give him nebulisers and oxygen there and then rather than treatment being delayed by driving to A&E. I absolutely dread to think what would have happened had an ambulance not been sent.

Lots of people do call 999 unnecessarily, but every paramedic I've spoken to has told me they'd rather be called to a healthy person and give them reassurance, than not be called out when they were really needed.

Not since reading posts on MN about calling ambulances, no.

You need to stop taking the opinions of strangers so seriously.

I am sure (from threads in the past) there are some on here that would think calling out an ambulance for the burn my son suffered a few weeks ago, but we were 100% right to do so.

There are times when you might question yourself, but you need to know the right times to err on the side of caution.

I had been poorly with a virus, nothing major, dosed up and carried on with school runs etc. One night woke up with this weird pain under my shoulder blade. Felt sick. Pain got worse and worse so woke DH up who told me to stay in bed while he sorted kids out and did school run. Was feeling awful and pain was getting worse. We couldnt get through to the doctors so DH called 111. They sent an ambulance as the pain qualified on their system as "chest pain" and they always have tl send an ambulance for that.

Paramedics turned up and did an ECG. That was fine. My blood pressure was not, it was super low, and my symptoms indicated sepsis. It all sort of snowballed from there, I very quickly got v poorly and was rushed into hosptial. I turned out to septic caused by advanced pneumonia which Id had for a while and put down as a bad virus.

Apparently if that ambulance hadnt turned up and Id waited another 24 hours to be seen I'd have died.

I now understand why 111 sends ambulances out so often, its not always as simple as see your GP etc and I had honestly not realised how "well" you could feel with sepsis and how fast things like that can go downhill.

@TooManyPaws sorry about your loss I think your post should be mandatory reading for all the "Never never call an ambulance unless X or Y or Z" crowd.

OP, the various Ambulance Trusts gather statistics on call-outs, deliveries to hospital, types of medical conditions, call-out waiting times, 'frequent fliers', etc. Some Trusts' stats are better than others, it has to be said, on things like alcohol-related admissions.

The reports are made public via a number of means, including usually on the Trusts' websites, and via Local Authorities' Health Scrutiny Committees (public meetings, reports on council websites).

My local Ambulance Trust's two biggest concerns according to their recent reports are 'frequent fliers' and alcohol-related admissions to A&E.