How long would you HOPE it would take for 999 ambulance call takers to answer the phone?

[nevereveragainneverever]

For many years I’ve had a recurring nightmare where something bad happens in the dream and I need to call an ambulance - but in my nightmare I get put on hold for ages while waiting for the ambulance service to pick up the phone.

Last night my nightmare came true.

I had to call 999 at 4.30am after getting some stern advice from my designated medical helpline to do so.

The 999 person asks which service I require. “Ambulance”, says I.

She tried to put me through but then said they were very busy ....and I was being placed on hold for the next available operator.

Now here's the thing; if you had a loved one who was seriously ill or injured / having a cardiac arrest / a child who was choking / not breathing etc - how long do you think you would reasonably have to be on hold to get the ambulance service to actually take your call so you could tell them about it?

I honestly thought it would be 20-30 seconds. After all they had no idea what I was calling about and whether someone was in grave danger.

Well….it was SIX AND A HALF MINUTES!!!!! 😩😠😲. On hold!!!! Before they even picked up the phone to ask if the patient was breathing!!

I am still so shocked by this. I’m NOT blaming them - that's not the point of this thread: they’re just so busy, I think understaffed by Covid and other issues and underfunding .

The 999 ambulance call handler took note of my symptoms and said it was a priority case due to chest pain, issues breathing, worrying oxygen sats, other symptoms.. and my underlying serious medical condition (cancer patient on chemotherapy, subsequently admitted to hospital).

The ambulance then took 2.5 hours to arrive!! On a priority call!

Again, I’m NOT blaming them; they had been delayed because they were flagged down in the road when en route to me by desperate parents whose child was sick…and whose own ambulance was delayed. It transpired that the ambulance they should have got had been commandeered by an aggressive, drunk 25 year old man who was demanding a trip to hospital by ambulance for his injured fist - that he got by punching a wall.

You couldn’t make it up! The crew did the right thing in stopping for the child in my view and again I'm not blaming the crew (who were fabulous) and who explained they have only had a total of ten minutes at base - in the last six months! The rest of the time it’s call out after call out - and he said it’s so often time wasters.

I despair. And thought you would like to know. I don't know what the solution is, but wanted to share my experience.

Rant over. Thank you for listening.

I have twice called 111 this year and it be escalated to an ambulance coming pretty quickly. I was really impressed.

health care professional here the services are sooo sooo overwhelmed since covid and are at a national crisis right now. it's not safe. at all! and gp services and lack of face to face appointments and dental care basically now being unregulated and private run is what is causing this! obviously covid has had an impact but at least we were able to help and maintain a balancing act. now it is a shit show to say the least. I honestly do not know what will happen next. never in my years of working has it ever been this bad and nothing is being done. the lack of primary care services is then having a knock on effect on mental health and long term illnesses and priority patients at immediate risk. then a good 40% of patients are abusing the system- before this could be swallowed but not any more- due to a a duty of care, sadly the time wasters still have rights and have to have ambulances sent purely for transport or to refuse the advised help when reaching them. it's so sad and frustrating and stressful working in the bus right now. I pray that I don't get sick myself as I wouldn't know where to turn :(

DD was 999 call handler and now works for ambulance service - I understand the system and limitations - but when it’s your DF struggling to breathe that all flies out the window (he’s dead now) I just remember feeling so helpless

@Kiwirose probably best I don't get too deep into politics as I'll get even more stressed, if that's even possible, but when some of my very own colleagues vote Tory it's hard not to compare it to turkeys voting for Christmas.

@BashfulClam I agree it's very frustrating to see, but I must say the decisions made when cameras are present may not always be made in standard circumstances. I can't blame the clinicians when you know how much public scrutiny you're going to be under but at some point we need to consider the impact of these types of cases being shown in these documentaries as it really gives the impression that we love rocking up for a chat and to give you a lift, maybe more programmes focusing on my poor Betty that's still on the floor because you've literally had her ambulance while you eat your tea would be more useful? I do question if these types of programmes have increased our call rate, some patients certainly have said on their call they don't mind if the camera crew come too, without us mentioning any such thing!

I had this nightmare happen this week. Almost 15 minutes.

Little DS was premature, and has been having repeated breathing problems. His breathing rate shoots up, and his oxygen levels plummet.

At 4:30 on Monday morning, his breathing rate was 85 breaths per minute (should be around 40, anything around 70 or above is an emergency). He was having rib retractions and sucking in at the top of his throat. This is the 5th time this has happened in the last 3 months, anytime he has any cold/respiration illness, he struggles to breathe. The stress on his body could lead to cardiac arrest, especially as the inhalers he has increase his heart rate.

It took 14 mins and 45 seconds for the call handler to answer the call. After 5 mins, I was on the process of flinging nappies into a bag, and putting some (day) clothes on, to drive him to the hospital, had the speaker phone on.

Once answered, the call handler stayed on the phone for 5 mins with me, and then had to hang up. The ambulance was 10 mins later (they arrived at 5am).

Hearing my little lad, fighting for breath, having given the max dose of his inhalers, desperately worried about his heart rate, and not being able to contact an ambulance is almost the scariest thing I've been through.

All of the staff have been so kind and professional, but the system is at breaking point.

I heard on the news today, someone was talking about this, their father had had a heart attack and his heart stopped, while they tried CPR, this only works in the short term, they need something more, while they will never know if it was because the ambulance service took so long, they think its more than likely

Survival rates from out of hospital cardiac arrests are poor even in ideal circumstances, so I think it is a bit of reach to say that it was "more than likely... because the ambulance services took too long". Even in countries (Scandinavia) with much better survival rates in out of hospital cardiac arrests this is not down to better ambulance services but due to long term programmes of compulsory CPR training in schools and better access to community defibrillators.

The BT operator can call a special number in the control room if they think you're literally dying while you wait for the call to be picked up

I hope nobody complaining here has ever voted Tory. This is exactly what you chose.

@Neenaw999 it’s heartbreaking reading your posts. For what it’s worth, thank you for everything you do

Unfortunately I suspect that we are genuinely witnessing the beginning of the end of the health service. I’ve never seen it as bad as this

Just going to quietly leave this here…..and this is a family who know the NHS inside out

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-58478138.amp

@nahnahnahnahnahyeh

Shit this is terrifying. I'm so anxious about my children choking, you can't wait 6 minutes for that.

In the case of a complete blockage basic first aid from bystanders is far more important than ambulance response times as even the quickest response is likely to be too slow to prevent brain damage, therefore attending a first aid course would be a good plan.

I am so so so so lucky and I know it.

Mid December before the Covid wave hit where I live, DH called 999 for me and the ambulance came quickly and I got a bed in A&E and got life saving/changing treatment.

I have been acutely aware that a few weeks later it could have been a very different outcome.

@user1471447924

I hope nobody complaining here has ever voted Tory. This is exactly what you chose.

Wales is under labour government and has been for years and the Welsh ambulance service have declared a business continuity incident this week.

We need to make this less party political and find real working solutions.

And I don't vote conservative.

I think it's been bad for years. Back 25 years ago I was on hold to the police for 30 mins and call was eventually answered by Rochdale (I was in Manchester). This was me arriving home alone late at night to find my door standing open and the burglar alarm blaring. I was too frightened to go inside and had to run to a friend's house on the next street to use the phone (no mobiles in those days).

What did surprise me was when my child was seriously ill and had to be transferred by ambulance from the children's ward at a general hospital to the children's hospital where the ICU beds are, the nurses explained that they have to call 999 an wait for an ambulance in the usual way.

Sobering thought, isn’t it @RandomMess

Hope you’re ok

My 12 year old DS took an overdose in lockdown 2. We only live 10 minutes away from hospital so DH half carried him to the car and whizzed off to a and e. Thankfully there was a security guard outside the hospital who rushed inside to get help when he saw the state ds was in. DS was taken straight through to resus with DH running behind after abandoning the car in the bus stop. DH said afterwards maybe we should have called an ambulance but after reading this thread I'm glad we didn't.

That's terrible - although sadly not surprising. But very scary. Just today my Dad was very low on oxygen (copd but he was at 73% which was low even for him) and I didn't trust an ambulance, so I just drove him to the hospital.

I’m a support worker. We had a 7 hour wait for an ambulance for an elderly lady on a concrete floor. Turns out she had a broken hip and femur.

I am [very kindly] told off by my GP surgery several times a year that

I should add too, much the same happened to my DS in June, I'd managed to get a (rare) GP's appointment for him, and he massively deteriorated whilst in the appointment. The the GP told me to get him to A&E myself as "you'll get there faster than an ambulance will take to get here".

I did get to A&E within 8 mins. I then had to queue with DS, struggling for every breath, outside A&E for 25 minutes, before he was even booked in. There were no staff around to call for help.

Once he was booked in, he was triaged, and rushed to Resus within 3 minutes.

@jimmyhill unfortunately not in our area, and I believe although happy to be corrected, no longer in most? I know they used to have access to a supervisors number to try to get the call prioritised to be answered, however our supervisors are also tied up taking calls so the call does wait inline with the the rest.

@ohfourfoxache I have seen this story and I'm very sorry for the family. As the case in under investigation I won't say too much, but the chances of surviving a out of hospital cardiac arrest even with a ambulance service response with defibrillator is something in the region of 6%. This includes all age groups so is slightly skewed to younger generally fitter members of the population. I believe every minute without CPR decreases your chances of survival by 10%. It certainly is important to learn CPR to give all our loved ones the best chance.

I had to call an ambulance and the police recently. The ambulance took 3 hours and the police, an hour after telling me they had sent someone out, told me that they hadn’t as police weren’t needed in my case. It’s awful. And I don’t blame those who work there, it’s the government. It makes me feel so helpless

@Neenaw999 I'm with you on colleagues voting Tory being like turkeys voting for Christmas. But I didn't mean you specifically - sorry if it came accross that way. I meant that the population at large need to consider what they are voting for.......

@parrotonthesofa

Maybe if people stopped voting for the tories who've spend years and years cutting the funding, we'd be out of this mess. I currently live in another European country and here on the two occasions that we've had the call, it was answered immediately and ambulance with us in less than 15 mins.

The Tories aren't the problem (even though I didn't vote for them). If any other political party were in government, the situation would be exactly the same. If one quadrupled NHS funding, it would still go into a black hole which would result in the same lack of service for us.

The only real solution is to accept that the NHS is no longer fit for purpose, and have a cross-party re-modelling of the whole thing. It needs to be detached from party politics, as no health service benefits from being messed around with for political reasons (ditto education, btw).

Apologies, wrong button.

I am [very kindly] told off by my GP surgery several times a year that my early-years child should already be in hospital (I have all of the equipment we need and go by the RAG status of the local authority). For the first time recently I rang 999 myself and was told an ambulance was on its way but would take an unknown amount of time. I took him in myself where we were taken straight to resus. We moved recently from a rural area to town and closeness to an A&E was one of the reasons for this, and in this case I was relieved that we did. We travel by ambulance more regularly than I would like but the crews are always brilliant and compassionate - I’m always incredibly grateful for their expertise and wish that they were more valued in terms of their pay but I don’t know how to tackle changing this.

@GlitterNails

It's really shocking. I read a local case of a man having a heart attack outside a GP surgery where he was heading for an appointment. None of the doctors would come out to him - and the ambulance took an hour, and he died.

I've been in some scary house fires - and every second feels like an eternity. It would be horrifying waiting with a loved one in an emergency.

That’s awful, why wouldn’t any of the GPs come out to him?