Was I unreasonable to call an ambulance / was it my fault.

[Sweetandsour11]

anbir of background : DD12 has a long standing medical history and has spent a lot of time in hospital. Although chronically ill she has done really well the last few years and avoided critical situations for a substantial time. We have a protocol that if she spikes a fever she has to attend A&E and be put on IVabs and bloods taken etc

on Sunday DD was fine her usual self and we had been out during the day. Nothing out of the character. Sunday evening she spiked a fever and as I always do I booked an uber to go to a&e which is around a 10 minute drive away.
DD started vomiting pretty severely and the uber refused to take her. I called 999 as she was rigouring vomiting a lot and was clearly not well at all. I explained to them about the situation and that she had an IV Hickman line in situ. They said that they would have to get a clinical person to call back who will then decided on clinical emergency.
40 minutes later they rang and sent an ambulance fast at this point.
when the paramedic arrived one of them seemed annoyed that they were sent to us. Kept repeating how close we were to the hospital but the issue is she couldn’t stand - he was soo rude and uninterested the entire time.
they took her obs and I knew they were bad. We were in the ambulance and the paramedic in the front asked the one in back if they do a pre alert to recuss and he said no.
he then said to me that “ when we have situations like this usually they would pre alert the hospital for recuss but because she was known there they will just turn up “
whrn we got there they just turned up with her in to normal treatment area. They know her but there wasn’t any indication given that she more poorly than previous times with a spiked fever as the paramedics didn’t do a pre alert and rolled her in to a normal cubicle asked the nurse who saw us if they knew her she said yes and they basically rushed off.
there was no indication she needed more help and it took a bit of time for it to be realised once in a&e. She deteriorated quite quickly and ended up in picu ventilated for 4 days.

surely the was the correct use of an ambulance ? 🥹

I would be asking around neighbours to see if in the future one of them can drive you, vomiting and all I’d be very happy myself to help a neighbour out and would have got you there a lot quicker than the uber refusing then waiting for an ambulance. May (hopefully) never be needed but 10 minutes is really close so a lift will nearly always be preferable to an ambulance

I have high praise for NHS staff, however some are not good. You met one unfortunately, which is a shame.

I would feedback what happened.

Paramedic was an areehole and put your child’s life in danger!! Had they called ahead then the rest probably wouldn’t have happened!! Make a formal complaint not just to pals but to the hospital and whoever manages the paramedics!!

@LayaM. But most of us would help a neighbour out and have. When you live in a town not a city with no reliable taxi service everyone pitches in. If you need an emergency lift you put it on the local facebook page and within a minute someone offers. I’ve helped my next door but one neighbour with a hospital a&e emergency in the past.

Always safer in situations like this - with pre existing conditions- to call an ambulance!!! If you get stuck in traffic and she deteriorates there’s nothing you can do! In the back of an ambulance though if this happens en route to A&e there is!

Some paramedics have a God complex op.

We’ve had similar when GP made home visit to relative and wanted them admitting. They insisted they needed ambulance transport because a) they were so unwell it was physically impossible to get them in a car and b) they needed oxygen! Turns out they had flu and sepsis and they spent several weeks in hospital.

Sibling is a practice nurse and has experienced the same when they’ve called an ambulance to the surgery for a seriously unwell patient that collapsed. The attitude was ‘well they got to the surgery, they could have got to hospital’. Hat, after collapsing?!

There was also a horrific incident nearby involving the local scout minibus. One poor child died at the scene, others were seriously injured. The paramedics were in no rush to see to the wounded and actually stopped my siblings nurse friend from trying to help because, apparently, the kids were just dramatic and screaming because they were young and a bit scared. Awful.

There are, of course, many marvellous ones. But, I imagine it’s also the daily frustration at the state of it all, the wasted hours spent queuing with their ambulances when people are dying because they can’t offload patients. I guess after several years of doing the job, and seeing things get worse and worse, and the frequency of people who don’t need an ambulance abusing the system, they get to the point of compassion fatigue. They should do what the rest of us do then, and get a new job, but I imagine a career switch is quite tricky when you’ve spent years training and getting experience in the field.

I hope DD is now on the mend.

An ambulance has trained medical people on board plus medications and things they need if she goes into cardiac arrest or whatever!! You don’t have that in the back of a car!!

THIS ^

this is the exact situation ambulances are for. Im so sorry you experienced such behaviour from a crew member, I hope your daughter is feeling better

Im not going to say whether you was right or wrong but you do need a plan b there is no way i would trust an ambulance to arrive quickly how many time do you hear stories of people having strokes and heart attacks and ambulances taking hours to arrive. Most people in an emergency situation will help others out if a neighbour knocked on my door or even some random person in the street asked me to drive them to a&e I would. If you have a child with a chronic illness and you have no family or friends you need to build a village. School parents, colleagues, neighbours. People will help if you ask.

You know it was the right decision. Complain.

Yes absolutely it’s the right use of an ambulance. Many years ago when my 7 week old daughter was poorly, she had stopped drinking and couldn’t be roused from sleep. Paramedics attended, typically she woke up and her obs were okay. But they told me I must call again if she spiked a fever. 11:30PM that night, she was reading at 38 and was incredibly hot. Being 7 weeks old I couldn’t give her paracetamol. Called 111 and the GP wanted her collected by an ambulance and into A&E. These two blokes turned up, dragging their heels, umming and ahhing about taking her in, despite a GP telling them she wanted her in. After an
hour, they decided to take her in due to her age and fever. They’d made me feel like I was making a fuss about nothing in the meantime. When I got to triage, I said to the nurse, do you think she needs to be here? She said absolutely she did, high temp, dehydrated and mottled skin were all red flag signs in such a young baby.
The 111 GP actually called me about one month later and told me that she noted down certain cases and calls to find out how everything was. I told her about the paramedics being so blase and that they’d told me the 111 GP’s were usually dramatic and how it had made me feel like I was a time waster and she was furious. She said they shouldn’t have even questioned it when they’d been sent by a doctor to collect a baby. It should have been straight into the ambulance and on our way. So don’t question yourself, especially when you know your DD was poorly enough to be admitted. And don’t hesitate next time either. I knew I would be more assertive if it happened again x

what a world we live in where in an emergency situation people think driving to the hospital is the way forward

rather than having an NHS without bed blocking which has an affect on the emergency services

But if it takes 10 minutes in the car and 5 hours for an ambulance to turn up I know which Id be choosing

You made the right call, and don't hesitate if this situations happens again (I hope it doesn't!). Best wishes to your dd for a speedy recovery.

You need to make a formal complaint. You did everything right and your child was clearly very unwell. That paramedic needs educating and his partner probably needs a break from it.

and if the patient has a seizure in the car on the way and stops breathing - then what?

just every so often it might actually be better just to floor it to hospital and take a chance... if you get there quickly you might avoid the 'cardiac arrest or whatever' situation (not commenting at all on whether that was the case here or not because none of us know the exact scenario, but this is a resource poor society we're living in and sometimes waiting for someone to come along and save the day may not always end up well).

And what if they do at home and the ambulance is still 40 minutes away i would rather break every traffic law and get them to hospital then wait for an ambulance that may eventually turn up

Being able to drive doesn’t mean you will always be able to transport a seriously ill person. I can drive, but when my child is unwell needing urgent medical attention at times it would be detrimental to drive. Infact there have been times when I’ve been told it’s safer to wait on the ambulance as opposed to driving myself.

Regardless on distance from the hospital, your then in a position of ensuring you drive safely, at the speed limit, whilst trying to ensure your child/loved one is ok. While maintaining composure, then you’ve got to worry about where to park, how to safely get them into the hospital etc.

Do the people so insistent on waiting for an ambulance live in big cities where there are significantly more ambulances then in rural areas because health care isn't the same across the country and is a massive postcode lottery. I've just looked where I live there are 14 ambulances

There was literally nothing unreasonable at all in how you handled it, OP. I’d absolutely speak to PALS - I understand that the ambulance service is under tremendous pressure but he shouldn’t have treated you like that.

It didn’t take 5 hours for the ambulance to come though so I didn’t get the relevance. The clinical person who spoke to me on the phone had one to us in minutes - because she was septic.
the issue was the paramedic who decided blue lights and a pre alert to the children’s recus despite it being protocol wouldn’t happen.

You did the right thing. Lots of people call an ambulance for far less things than your dd's situation. A dr called an ambulance for my 17 year old last year when he fell over at park run. He was absolutely fine, just tripped but he is autistic so couldn't cope with a load of people staring at him and didn't respond. Then his heart rate went through the roof because of the stress and the paramedics wanted to take him to hospital.

A few years before we had the opposite situation. Ds had taken an overdose. We live 10 minutes from the hospital so DH just picked him up, bundled him in the car and drove there as we thought it would be quicker than waiting for an ambulance. I think the staff at a and e were a bit shocked we hadn't called an ambulance as they went from the traffic warden saying dh couldn't park outside a and e to him fetching a nurse and a wheelchair to rush ds straight to resus very quickly.

I once had an ambulance sent for me for what was ultimately just a panic attack (never had one before or since). I apologised profusely to the paramedics for wasting their time but they were so kind and lovely reassured me that I hadn't done anything wrong. He was being a prick for no reason