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 don't think people who can wait over 2 hours for an ambulance need one. They should get a taxi.

I have to agree with this PP.

A blue light ambulance for me comes under category of 'immediately impending death' and If you have not died in 2-5+ hours then its clearly not a blue light emergency.

I think we need a separate service for assisted transport to A&E. People that require urgent treatment and cant get to a hospital should have assistance, but its clearly not the same as a death impending heart attack, cardiac, seizures, strokes, trauma etc.

I work for 111 and is it is truly shocking at the amount of unnecessary ambulances we send. It pains me to send them because I’m always worried about other people desperately needing them. I always think what it it was my own family the ambulance is delayed.

We can’t go against what the patient is saying. We are not there and obviously can’t see what’s going on. If they say their in agonising pain etc then we have to believe them. The system is over safe to cover their backs. I’m so relieved when people say they will make their own way to a&e. Depending on the type of ambulance it can take hours for them to come. In actual fact most people could’ve gone to a&e but as they’ve called 111 and their answers have triggered an ambulance we have to offer it. And you’ll be surprised at so many people who will accept it.

For category 3 ambulances depending on the area , if the assessment triggers it then we can put it through to a clinician to do a further assessment. When I look back you will see the clinician has advised a&e or even an out of hours appt which just goes to show most people don’t need an ambulance. However, if there are soo many cases in the clinical queue then we have to offer it. There aren’t enough clinicians working so it could be ages for people to get a call back. So we are having to send the ambulance instead. Which is just a complete waste as I know the majority would’ve had their outcomes changed if they had spoken to a clinician.

We get a lot of repeat callers as well and can imagine that 999 get it worse. There’s this person that calls at least 30 times a day.

Whenever I’ve sent an ambulance and it hasn’t gone through electronically, I have to call 999 myself. Majority of the time I get through straight away. Sometimes I have been placed on hold but never more than a few minutes.

They really need to teach first aid and cpr at school. It would lessen the amount of calls and people would know what to do. If there were enough gps to see people then people wouldn’t get worse and have to go to a&e and call 111/999. If there were more walk in centres that would reduce the pressure too.

My father fell over in winter on the pavement outside his house and it took four hours for the ambulance to come. Luckily his carer was able to bring a pillow, duvet and blankets out for him to stop him getting cold. This is what happens when people vote the Tories in. It happened last time in the 90s under Thatcher and Major when hospital wards were just closed down for lack of funding.

@QuestionableMouse

It took maybe 30 seconds to connect for me earlier today. The call handler warned me that even for a blue light emergency, it could take up to two hours and if possible, to take my mam to the hospital myself.

I wasn't able to take her myself and the ambulance came within 30 minutes.

The fucking government needs to start throwing money at the NHS to hopefully improve things.

Many appear to consider the ambulance as a taxi service to hospital. Get into a bloody car and take yourselves if you're capable of walking.

We wouldn't have dreamed of calling an ambulance unless we were profoundly unwell/dying/bleeding out/unable to get to hospital in a car. I've seen people waiting in A&E for removal of a splinter. Really?

The public abuse the ambulance service when mostly it should only be used in the most exceptional circumstance so those in dire emergency can get timely help.

First Aid should be taught in schools from a very early age so we would raise less risk averse, more resilient, capable adults who can deal with minor injury themselves.

@Elderflower14

When my late partner was terminally ill we had a really hard time getting an ambulance out. In the end my friend rang up and told the call handler she wouldn't be hanging up till she saw an ambulance outside. We have three hospitals near us. DP was being treated at Norwich. The ambulance crew who walked in were from Ipswich. One of them looked at the paperwork and said "Ohhh Norwich!" I looked over my glasses and asked if he had a problem with that? He looked a little shocked and replied that he didn't. I then said right let's get on with treating my partner!

Bit rude.

@winewolfhowls

I just can't believe that there isn't some huge sanction for timewasters, like a grand fine or something. Hope you are recovering well op, that wait must have been terrifying

how could there be when lots of those time wasters are there under their GPs advice. Or when they ring 111.

@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.

This

My elderly tory voting father was very upset at having to wait 7 hours for an urgent ambulance. (I couldn't move him).

When he improved the next week... I did inform him it was largely due to him and his tory voting pals who cause this mess...

Tories have STARVED NHS of money... Go figure...

@Tippexy. We had been waiting most of the day for an ambulance and then to have a paramedic grumble about where he had to take a terminally ill mad was the final straw.

Completely agree OP that over 6 minutes is way too long to be on hold to get an ambulance. The service is on its knees and has been for years. I’ve been on hold to the police before now for around the same time when I called 999. It was about 45 minutes when I called 101. I feel so sorry for all emergency call handlers too, it must be so stressful for them knowing that lives might be lost when they have to have people on hold as every seconds counts sometimes.

The other shocking thing is the amount of ambulance staff waiting to hand over. A couple of years ago when I was in A&E and there were four crews of ambulance staff in the corridor of A&E waiting to hand over so that is four ambulances off the road. I went for X-ray and back and they were still all there.

Our service centre was changed and it is now a couple of hours away. I wrote my car off on the ice a couple of years ago and it was about 45 mins before anyone arrived. It was a paramedic in the car but then we had to wait an hour for the ambulance because whoever called it in gave the road name but not the location or the local name for the cross roads.The ambulance had gone to the road name but there are four in our county and they went to the one miles away because that is where the call service sent them not realising there was more than one of the same name. The paramedic said it wasn’t the first time when she tracked them down. Also they had been driving around because they couldn’t find me. Again not there fault but she said it was better before they changed the call centre because of local knowledge.

DP is a senior paramedic who hates his job- his main issues are 111 sending them to nonsense; EVERYTHING being a C2 priority causing delays, people phoning for the wrong reasons and the hospital being slow to offload patients. In 7 years in the job he has watched it get slowly worse and people leave constantly only for them to be unable to recruit anyone else. Its messed up!

I called last week to cancel and ambulance, as instructed ("you're sure I'm to call 999, I asked?") And without them knowing my reason for calling, I was on hold for over 4 minutes. At 4am on a Thursday morning.i keep reflecting on that, wondering what happens if a loved one is having a heart attack....

When dd was transferred from one hospital to another by ambulance there was no wait to hand over at all. Is that done by need too? You couldn't have ambulance staff with a critically ill RTA or gunshot victim waiting 4 hours to hand over in an A and E corridor, for example?

Sorry this happened, this sounds awful, I've only ever called 999 twice, and that was for the fire service and for real police and I was put straight through both times, never called for an ambulance but I would expect to be put through instantly as well, I can't imagine if someone I loved was having a heart attack or was choking or something, and having to wait 6 minutes! Jesus! I think I'm going to look into doing some sort of first aid course so I can at least know the basics if those situations happen!

I also think that there needs to be some sort of education on what 999 is actually for, I watch these emergency programmes and there are so many time wasters it's ridiculous, it's supposed to be an EMERGENCY line. I also think education on what the doctors is for as well, my sister is a GP, it seems people are now treating GPs the way they would have used to have treated priests (I.e to go to them to talk about any of their problems) my sister has people coming in because they have a broken toe nail, or the common cold, and even had one lady phone up because she needed a new carpet and thought they would be able to sort it out for her! Wtf! The NHS is not free, and there are a lot of people who need genuine help who aren't getting it because some people don't seem to understand what it's actually for

For those who say “people who can wait two hours don’t need an ambulance” -

I fell downstairs last month and landed badly, fracturing my heel bone, damaging ankle ligaments and also ligaments in left knee. An ambulance was called because I was in excruciating pain, lying half in the bedroom, half in the hallway, unable to move. The front door is at the top of the stairs, I was at the bottom. The ambulance took an hour and 45 minutes to get to me and the staff were wonderful, dealing with pain relief and splinting my ankle, carrying me up the steep stairs to the ambulance and off to hospital.

If I shouldn’t have called an ambulance because I could “wait 2 hours”, how was I supposed to get the help I needed? I was category 3 because I was safe where I was, but there is no way I could have got up the stairs without assistance and pain relief - and I did need hospital care.

You couldn't have ambulance staff with a critically ill RTA or gunshot victim waiting 4 hours to hand over in an A and E corridor, for example?

No this shouldn't happen but if there is no space then there is no space and there are occasions where a&e scrabble around to move a patient out of Resus to make way for the next, or the Resus team comes out onto the ambulance to assess the patient whilst they wait for space.

Some ambulance trusts fine health boards for delays handing over, but this is very political and depends on funding so doesn't happen in Wales for example where ambulance care is funded via the regional health boards, therefore they would effectively be fining themselves.

In some areas in extreme cases patients are waiting on ambulances for nearly 24hours, this obviously wouldn't happen for a major trauma patient but everything is relative, so sometimes they do wait.

I went to a major trauma patients recently who was categorised as a 'red' call (highest priority of patient) and no vehicle was dispatched for 20 minutes because there wasn't any vehicles available, simple as that. Patient was anesthestised and ventilated immediately on arrival at hospital and transferred on to the trauma centre by helicopter.

This is literally what the electorate of this country voted for. If you voted Conservative, this is on you.

@Lalliella

This is literally what the electorate of this country voted for. If you voted Conservative, this is on you.

No it's not, it's a cross party problem.

@Gimlisaxe it's this story

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

It's pretty poor reporting, blames the crew delays entirely. It was stated that he collapsed at home and received CPR and by the time the ambulance arrived he was asystolic (flat line) so unable to be defibrillated. There is every possibility that he could have suffered an asystolic arrest, in which case had ambulance been 5 minutes away with a defib it still would've been largely useless.
I have every sympathy for the loss of his father, but solely pointing the finger of blame at an ambulance delay is not the full picture, and as a cardiologist he should know this and the stats of an out of hospital cardiac arrest.

*This is literally what the electorate of this country voted for. If you voted Conservative, this is on you.

No it's not, it's a cross party problem*

Agree. I worked for the nhs when Labour were in power. At the time my dept was at risk of closure so I went to a lot of management meetings, and training courses designed to teach us how to privatise ourselves and contract back to the nhs- aka “social enterprise”.

Very labour in theory, power to the workers and all that, but privatisation by another name. As we’ve seen in all sectors, these “social enterprises” have turned into massive corporate businesses over time.

And yes, our department was taken over by a private company and contracted back in.

And I don’t vote conservative.

I think a £40 charge for each GP visit and an £300 charge for each ambulance call-out would sort out a lot of problems.

These costs are within the scale of what most people have to cope with in every day life, most people have no need for these expenses to be covered by any kind of insurance, social or private. But for responsible people (non time-wasters) on low incomes private insurance to cover these bills would probably only cost a few pounds a month.

People don't vote for cuts that will affect them. They somehow manage to believe that they will pay less tax and yet have amazing services and any cuts will only affect others, most commonly them there benefit cheats wiv their flat screen TVs and their sky subscriptions. 🤷‍♀️

I don't believe such people ever join the dots between who they vote for and what they get.

It's apparently a 12hour wait for an ambulance for a heart attack just now. I'm actually worried if we do need urgent care we won't get in on time. It's frightening!

Also the nhs is quite clearly understaffed but are there any nurses or doctors looking for a job right now ? There simply isn't enough of them and this won't be rectified until they take more into universities which doesn't help the situation happening the now!

@RandomLondoner

I think a £40 charge for each GP visit and an £300 charge for each ambulance call-out would sort out a lot of problems.

These costs are within the scale of what most people have to cope with in every day life, most people have no need for these expenses to be covered by any kind of insurance, social or private. But for responsible people (non time-wasters) on low incomes private insurance to cover these bills would probably only cost a few pounds a month.

The problem with that is that the people wasting time are the ones that won’t pay. So, it’ll just end up like the farce when the Sec of State too part of child maintenance if the resident parent was on benefits - shedloads people will end up owing money.

There would then be a further push for insurances. Which leads to people who can’t afford it, and there are people who don’t have the money for insurance even if it’s cheap to most, being unable to access healthcare.

Charging for the GP would likely be counterproductive because people who can’t afford £40 wont go with something easily treated, then it’ll end up costing ££££ in emergency treatment when they end up with sepsis or complications and have to go into hospital.