Out of Area

Occasionally, we get calls for other parts of the UK. Usually this happens if somebody – from Cardiff for example – phones a relative in Sussex, and they suddenly collapse. The person in Sussex will phone 999, and we process the call as usual. When the call is finished, we’ll look up the ambulance service for that county and pass it to them to deal with. Yesterday, I took a call for a patient in High Wycombe, a 73 year old female who had collapsed in her utility room. Her son, who had special needs, panicked and called his uncle who lives in Brighton. He phoned 999 himself, and automatically got through to the Sussex control room. I took the call as usual, but then there was some confusion over which service actually covered High Wycombe! It’s East Midlands Ambulance Service, if you’re interested. Altogether that call took 11 minutes from the initial beep in my ear to completing passing the call to EMAS. Not bad!

Sometimes, we have to use our powers of persuasion with patients. I got a call from a very sheepish 57 year old man who was stuck on the toilet. He was disabled, and couldn’t transfer himself from the toilet to his wheelchair. He was also pretty certain that something was going on ‘down there’ so that was causing him a bit of pain. He wasn’t sure he needed an ambulance, and asked me if I thought he did. “How will you get off if we don’t come out to you?” I asked. He couldn’t think of an answer, so agreed to let me send a crew to him.
“I feel such a fool!” he told me. “Stuck on the toilet at my age! Will the crew mind? It seems such a stupid reason to have an ambulance.”
“That’s what we’re here for, to help people. People call ambulances for far more trivial reasons.”
I felt pleased with the way I handled this call. I made this man feel slightly better about calling us out, and even though we could have refused to send one because he wasn’t in a life threatening situation, how else would he have got off the toilet? If he’d called the out of hours GP, I’m sure they’d have referred him straight to us anyway!