The camera is on board an ambulance as it
responds to an emergency call
BBC journalist Mark Ashdown: Another emergency
call. On a shift Phil and Kevin will get about 10 of these…
Emergency Medical Technician Kevin Lawlor
(explaining the emergency call): 30-year-old female who’s slipped
over apparently, and banged her head.
Mark: …each one treated with the same
urgency.
Paramedic Phil Guthrie (talking to the
patient): So, this fight you were in (laughter)...
Mark: After reassuring the patient they take
her to hospital with a suspected broken arm.
Kevin (talking to the camera in the back of
the ambulance): It can range from anything from a cut finger to a
cardiac arrest. It’s a huge diversity of jobs. The list is endless
and as I’m saying that the bell is ringing, we’ve got a job so
we’ll be off now.
Mark (cut to the emergency operations centre):
When you first dial 999 this is who answers. Each operator takes
about 50 calls a day.
Emergency Medical Dispatcher Juliet George:
People are usually quite upset when they come through, and they can
be quite cross sometimes, and, you know, so you have to be quite
patient and you have to sort of take a deep breath sometimes
because it’s not personal.
Mark: They have to be ready for anything…
Juliet (to camera): …so that we’re starting
something…(to the caller) emergency ambulance tell me exactly
what’s happened…I know it’s difficult for her and I understand
she’s in a lot of pain.
Mark: In the day we spent here there were just
over 3,600 calls. Almost a quarter were deemed non emergency. (Cut
to the urgent operations centre) Some calls are now diverted here,
another call centre where trained paramedics offer advice and other
options.
Clinical Telephone Adviser Hayley Russell (to
the caller): …and what time of day did you fall last night, or
yesterday…
BBC: Changing attitudes is hard.
Hayley (to the camera): Some are quite
disgruntled and not impressed that they’ve been referred to another
system. Rather than ‘where’s my ambulance’ at the end of the day,
you know, we try to explain to them that the way the Service works
now you don’t ring up 999 and one’s going to appear. We don’t have
the resources, we don’t have enough ambulances or the amount of
people, especially in London.
Medical Director Fionna Moore (to camera): Of
course we don’t ever want to discourage somebody from calling an
ambulance when we really need one, but with the level of demand
that we’re now seeing we need to ensure that we can get to patients
as quickly as possible when they really need us.
Mark (cuts to a patient’s home): Like Phil and
Kevin’s next case.
Derek, a patient: …painful when I breathe and
I’m short of breath…
Mark: With a history of heart problems, for
Derek here speed is essential. They got here in seven minutes, to
hospital within the hour. It looks like he’ll be okay.
Derek (to Phil and Kevin): …when you parked
this outside my house, as soon as I saw it I felt a lot better
Phil (to camera): If we’re dealing with
somebody who’s not suffering with anything immediately
life-threatening it can be quite frustrating. We know that other
people out there are suffering from chest pains or strokes or
allergic reactions or having, you know, being stabbed or shot that
we can’t deal with until we’ve dealt with the patient that we’re
with.
Mark (to camera): Everyone I’ve met today
seems to share a common frustration: abuse of the service.
Sometimes it is on purpose but mostly just because when things go
wrong people don’t know any different than to straight away call an
ambulance. Now, budgets are only going to get tighter so it’s going
to be crucial to get across that message that there are other
options out there to make sure those who most need the Service
continue to get it. Mark Ashdown, BBC London News, with the London
Ambulance Service.
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