If you were to call for an ambulance, most of you wouldn’t realise I exist. I’m an ambulance dispatcher, which is different to the call handlers you speak to over the phone.
Even though I rarely speak to callers directly, it is a stressful job. We are under incredible pressure to send the right resource to the right patient, hit government waiting-time targets, and deal with paramedics on the radio who often forget how many calls we are juggling every day.
When your call comes in, it is coded via a computer system. If it’s red 1, that means cardiac arrest. Red 2 could mean chest pain, breathing problems, fitting, or an unconscious patient. We try our best to get the nearest resource to you as quickly as possible and are set a target by the government to be on the scene within eight minutes of these most serious calls. We don’t always manage that.
Other calls will be categorised in the green 1 or 2 category – this might be falls with an injury, broken bones, road traffic collisions, headaches, or bleeding, for example. In most cases, these requests for help are held with me until I can allocate an ambulance. If your call is categorised as a green 3 or 4 – this might be non-injury falls, abdomen pain, headaches – you’ll most likely get a call back from a clinician to arrange the most appropriate help. Heartbreakingly, if you’ve fallen, that means you could wait on the floor for hours before we manage to send someone to help.
There is a shortage of resources and the unions that represent paramedics put even more pressure on dispatch teams. They argue that a paramedic who will have to work 30 minutes past the end of their shift to see the patient and potentially take them to hospital should not have to take an emergency call. This means that some may not go on a call for the last hour or more of their shift. We might have to send a team that’s an hour away, when there is an available ambulance much closer, because of such rules.
Our guidelines state that we should rarely use paramedic cars for less serious calls – they should mainly be used for red 1 and 2 calls that are subject to government targets. But an incident that was initially low risk can easily become more serious, and this delay in sending help is having dire consequences. We continue to see an increase in fatalities from calls coded as green once our crews arrive.
These incidences are not reported on, because there are no targets for these calls. Every time it happens, we dispatchers are left wondering if we did everything we could, if we could have found a car to send to you sooner. If we had done so, perhaps you or your relatives would have had a better chance. Paramedics will often get feedback when there is a serious incident, but we rarely hear anything. We also never see changes implemented to prevent such incidences in the future.
The pressure in my control room has become so severe that it is damaging staff wellbeing. Our concerns for patient care are rarely listened to by management and the overall morale is incredibly low. There’s a high turnover of staff and many of my colleagues end up off sick with stress.
I’m an NHS ambulance dispatcher. I am overworked and undervalued. I try to do my best for you, but I’m sorry my service often fails when you need it the most.
This series aims to give a voice to the staff behind the public services that are hit by mounting cuts and rising demand, and so often denigrated by the press, politicians and public. If you would like to write an article for the series, contact kirstie.brewer@theguardian.com
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I"m an NHS ambulance dispatcher and I know my service is failing you
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