If you caught the Dispatches programme about the ambulance service the other night, then you have had a fairly realistic insight into what kind of jobs ambulance crews get presented with day to day. Official statistics tell us that only 10% of the jobs we go to as category A, the ones where we have to arrive within 8 minutes of the call being made, actually required a fast response.
Fast response usually requires fast driving and although we are highly trained and often experienced drivers, we cannot change the laws of physics. If it is going to go wrong, a wheel dropping off or someone pulling out in front of us for example, it will be devastating and may involve more vehicles than just our own. Thankfully, because of driving standards, such incidents are rare, but you can't get away from the fact that we are putting people, including ourselves, at a certain amount of risk when rushing to people who don't really need us. The eight minute response time target ups the chances of someone getting hurt to help someone who, 9 times out of 10, isn't.
So what do we do? A review is the most obvious step. Something to allow dispatchers the opportunity to have more discretion in deciding which category a patient falls into and therefore the speed of the response, not to mention the possibility that we can be redirected to someone who needs us more.
What I mean is this; frequently we have to respond to known time wasters as category A patients (with all the inherent dangers discussed above) because they always complain of symptoms that make them category A. So when we are en route can will not be redirected even if a genuine patient calls for help. When I complain, I am told of the adage that the timewaster may one day actually need help. Everyone reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. Except that in the boy who cried wolf the sheep eventually get eaten. The boy is punished for his transgressions.
The time wasters we go to, who tie up resources and put the lives of other road users and patients at risk, are never punished. In effect the villagers never tire of coming out en masse to scare off the big bad wolf. Years go by and every time the same fool screams help they come. No one dares to say enough is enough. Not such a meaningful fable is it?
