Most of the public are probably not aware of how a 999 call is structured, this is partly due to the fact that you may only use 999 once in your lifetime, or that the emergency services do not spend enough on informing the public what they should expect if they dial 999. I will opt for the latter.
When you dial 999 you will get through to an operator who will ask you what service you require, if you then say Ambulance, you will be put through to a call handler at an Emergency dispatch centre. This is where myth number one comes into play, call handlers do not instantly know where you are, and the majority of the time are not even in the same town as you, so when you say, “I am by the post box near Burger King”, that means nothing to us at all, you need to be armed with at the very least a road name and town, or preferrably a postcode.
Once we have got through the address stage, we will ask for the phone number you are calling from, and yes it is very important, because if the line drops out, we cannot get back to you! this is where myth number 2 comes into play. We are not part of Spooks, or MI5, we are not James Bond, we CANNOT pinpoint your exact location by your mobile phone signal, we do not have that technology, even the Police do not have that technology, in extreme circumstances we can narrow it down to within a set circumferance between two mobile phone mast’s, but even then we would have to send up the helicopter to find you, and probably would not succeed. Also the amount of people that do not know their own phone number is staggering, especially mobile numbers, but I bet if a hot chick asked for it you would reel it off without pausing!!.
After we have assitained your address and phone number, which can take a long time, we will then ask you “what is the problem, tell me exactly what has happened”, this is the part where the caller shines and tells us exactly why you need a emergency ambulance, bearing in mind we dont need a life’s history of the patient, just what has happened in the moments leading up to you ringing for an ambulance.
We then go into AMPDS mode, (not all UK counties use this system, but the majority do). AMPDS stands for Advanced Medical Priorty Dispatch System, and it is a set of 32 cards that define how the Ambulance service prioritise calls, there are now 35 cards, but only 32 are used for the general public, the others are for other healthcare professionals. AMPDS will always start the same, we will ask if you are with the patient, the age of the patient, the patients gender, and whether the patient is conscious and breathing, once these have been determined we will then select one of the 32 cards which is nearest to the problem of the patient, so if you say “my dad is having chest pains” we will select card number 10, which is the card relating to chest pain, we will then ask a series of questions relating to chest pains. It is important to understand that these questions do not delay an emergency response to the patient, the Ambulance has already been dispatched as soon as we have got the address. The questions are still very important because it defines the coding of the call, and also the level of response that you will receive.
There are three priority dispatch codes, these are A category calls, B category calls and C category calls, some services use RED, AMBER and GREEN, red being A, Amber being B and Green being C, A or RED calls are the most serious types of calls and will lead to the patient normally being sent a RRV (Rapid Response Vehicle) to get to the patient as quickly as possible, to administer life saving treatment.
B calls are deemed not as serious as A cat calls, but still need a blue light response to attend within a set time limit, and C cat calls are deemed non life threatening and have a time limit of 60 minutes to respond attached to them, you will not get a blue light response for a cat C call.
Hopefully this information has enlightend and helped a few people if they ever need to ring 999 for an Ambulance.
