I've got to side with the QAS on this. All this woman told them was that her son "wasn't well", which is *not* what ambulances are for. While in this case something was seriously wrong, nothing in the call suggested it was the case, and ambulances can't be deployed for every sick person in the state. The dispatcher's response was the appropriate one, no way should he have been fired.
I spent several months at the Roma St station in brissy as a dispatch officer for the QPS, i quit because of stress i was 19 at the time, to me this sounds as if the man is altered, not knowing if hes in the kitchen or not and not being able to see everything, clearly sounds as if there is some sort of brain injury and also the fact the mother is obviously concerned enough, hindsight is 20/20 and shoulda coulda woulda, didnt, shows perhaps how overworked the system is here,,, thanks Anna Bligh!
What many don't realize is that while the EMD is asking questions, the despatcher next to him/her is already sending an ambulance. All these questions need to be asked so that an ambulance is either sent lights and sirens or not. Quite often an ambulance rocks up with the caller still on the phone. Listen to the patient....no slurred speech, no pain, not complaining of anything specific, doesn't sound short of breath.
A brilliant call. Firstly from the call taker involved. Well done - i relate to this all the time - I too am a 000 Calltaker & this sounded like one of those calls where you just have NO IDEA where its leading too.....'Not Well' will not get you a Code 1 Ambulance. Secondly, a call from members of the public who cannot provide accurate information to the emergency services. At no point did i think this warranted an "Emergency Light s & Sirens Response" Very frustrating.
Complete sympathy for the 000 operator. I do this for the police, talk with the ambulance regularly and have no tolerance for this crap. Never send a crew to an unknown situation
I'm an EMD in the UK, the EMD on this call did well, trying to assertain what the problem was, but you can only go so far in questioning if the caller, or the patient doesnt know. With the info given from the call, i would have gone card 26 sick person.
I'm a little mad that the EMD lost his job over this. Sounds to me he did everything correctly. When people ring up saying: "I don't know what happened, I just heard funny noises, please send and ambulance," makes the job even harder. The EMD even spoke to the conscious, breathing (able to walk) patient. MPDS or EMDs do not dispatch the helicopter, doctors, and ambulances lights and sirens within 10seconds for "I don't know what happened". I thought it was a hoax to be honest.
"A scatterbrain" ? That's harsh! She was an 80yr old lady. Considering the circumstances she held it together remarkably well. You can't expect someone in that situation to speak with eloquence and clarity. He son had suffered an embolic stroke and later suffered a second one. These can kill and he's been left permanently brain damaged! Stroke victims MUST receive attention quickly. Hardly the equivalent of spilling sugar. He can no longer read and subsequently had to leave his job.
haha this came up as a suggested video despite it being so old. not sure why. but my opinion i totally sympathise with the call taker involved in this here. it wouldn't have hurt based on the information to dispatch someone code 3)low priority) to just swing by the address and make sure there was nothing seriously wrong medicly. but to have lost his job over it for simply being cautious about sending a crew is wrong. he quite rightly wanted to get as much information as he could first especially the fact the old woman kept changing her story and was so vague
Hey Anna, Yep, I can understand that. I guess that a hundred things go through your mind when you take a call like that. "shoulda coulda woulda" says it all, aye. I have every sympathy for all parties in this. Thanks for your comment.
belojama No, he didn't lose his temper, but any EMD can expect to be challenged by situations like these from time to time, and some far more demanding. The ability to hold one's temper, is an essential prerequisite character profile for this role. Just an open question, do you think the EMD did enough to ease the anxiety of the elderly mother? And yes, strategic protocol and timing will always be determined by the limitation in resources.
Considering the mother of the pt was an extremely poor historian and unable to portray events leading up to the incident, I think the dispatcher did a damn good job. The Ambulance have a limited amount of resources in each area of operation and at least this EMD was trying to ascertain the validity of the call. All too often Ambulances are despatched to stubbed toes or shaving cuts (without any exaggeration or word of a lie), when there is a cardiac arrest or AMI just around the corner.
What they should have done is selected the mythical "he had a few drinks and i heard a weird noise from the next room" card and he still wouldn't have agot a priority response... Signal 3, back of the cue!
I must say that when I started listening to this I knew the women was joking due to the anxiousness of her voice. However what she was saying wasn't making a lot of sense. It is extremely hard at the start of the video to identify that anything was wrong. Even the patient stated he had no injuries. Concern arises for me about 1/2 way through the video when the mother says she has never seen him act like this before. Family always knows best and if they say something is off then there usually tends to be something wrong. I think that the mother was just very scared and anxious and unable to clearly say what was going on which makes it very difficult for the call taker to identify the issue. I do not think he should have lost his job. Given the evidence of the information given I don't feel he did anything wrong.
Thats not what the caller said, she she heard a noise in the other room but didn't bother to have a look, then said he had a few drinks, what are you supposed to do with this?
No idea why this man lost his job. Sounds to me like he did everything right, gave her correct advice, dispatched a crew. They can't send ICP's and doctors code 1 to every caller that says "he's just acting strange".
0.53 - dispatcher may feel he had a stroke or a seizure event but cannot ask, but she also said he has a drink and then moved to ?fall. the patient almost says he cant see....@ 3.16 as he was cut off
I have a certain sympathy for the operator. The Ambos are under pressure and if they're sent on a wild goose chase, another genuine call could result in a fatality. I've heard Ambos being called by people who are drunk and just want a lift home, or someone can't get the lid off a bottle...really dumbarse stupid calls. This time the dispatcher lacked empathy, he misread the call and got it completely wrong. Should he have lost his job, idk, probably not, imo!
@Shazza036 My advice take the initial complaint and run with it. Don't over intellectualise it like this kid did. I know you are going through your training now and you want to be precise but really when you are out on your own do you want to get straight 'A's' or do you want to save a life? Having a call not go to queue for almost 5 minutes is unacceptable in terms of both patient outcome and community expectations.
@Shazza036 An 'echo' response for a conscious and breathing patient? From her initial statement that "he's had a few drinks and is acting funny" would have lead me to 'overdose' as the chief complaint. But a protocol 28 is not far off the mark either. Either way this man would have gotten a lights and sirens response whether you chose any of the responses you have mentioned -and that's the end result.
Ben Memes Yes but within 1 minutes 30 seconds you have a confirmed unwitnessed fall and a request of an Ambulance. His mother is not a medical professional and does not how to describe the presenting condition. I don't know why he lost his job either. It all seemed pretty logical from my end, on what he was saying - but from their end very hard to weigh up what was happening. The Ambulance have to maintain balance--knowing what emergency jobs are taking place and who to allocate and have as much reasoning as they need. An unwitnessed fall is enough reasoning to begin with to put the call through. This is where lies public education: realizing a stroke. At the minimum at least someone realized something was wrong... maybe not the seriousness of it... but that something was wrong and needed to be done.
Obviously an american - we dont just send everyone lights abd sirens here. We know you guys love you adrenaline rushed 2 ladder trucks and an angine company + an ambulance when we can find one responses. They would have got an ambulance right away, but the job being low acuity (and there is no other way you can call it based on the scant information from the call) would have been diverted multiple times to cases where there was an identified life threat, not "Heard a noise in the next room"
Is everyone in society getting so precious these days that as soon as you spill some sugar on the kitchen bench we feel the need to call emergency services just because our taxes pay for it. From a clinical point of view, the caller was a scatterbrain. Caller states the patient is conscious, not injured and not a psych case and he even talks coherently to the operator......so he's not seriously ill or injured which makes me think why they called the ambulance...simple, because they can.
Must admit, when the dispatch operator asked "Is this a joke?" I just wanted to belt them in the mouth. Regardless of what info you can get out of the caller, it's the law here to treat ALL calls to triple-000 as serious and real until proven otherwise. Yes, it is exceedingly annoying and stupid to misuse the emergency number BUT people have been in genuine peril who have later died as a result of deliberate inaction of the emergency services simply because the call for help was dismissed as a hoax. That's the problem with anything that effects the brain. There is such a thing as 'Silent Stroke' where like 'Silent Heart Attacks', the patient and those around them would have NO KNOWLEDGE of what has happened. In this case because the patient had been drinking, makes it even harder to determine. And stroke is serious because there is only a very small window in which to reverse the damage done to the brain - the gap is only 4 hours. After that, the damage is lifelong and can even be fatal. At least QAS has it's separate non-urgent response phone number on their units. Ours here in SA just say 000.
Considering the mother of the pt was an extremely poor historian and unable to portray events leading up to the incident, I think the dispatcher did a damn good job. The Ambulance have a limited amount of resources in each area of operation and at least this EMD was trying to ascertain the validity of the call. All too often Ambulances are despatched to stubbed toes or shaving cuts (without any exaggeration or word of a lie), when there is a cardiac arrest or AMI just around the corner.
I've got to side with the QAS on this. All this woman told them was that her son "wasn't well", which is *not* what ambulances are for. While in this case something was seriously wrong, nothing in the call suggested it was the case, and ambulances can't be deployed for every sick person in the state. The dispatcher's response was the appropriate one, no way should he have been fired.
I spent several months at the Roma St station in brissy as a dispatch officer for the QPS, i quit because of stress i was 19 at the time, to me this sounds as if the man is altered, not knowing if hes in the kitchen or not and not being able to see everything, clearly sounds as if there is some sort of brain injury and also the fact the mother is obviously concerned enough, hindsight is 20/20 and shoulda coulda woulda, didnt, shows perhaps how overworked the system is here,,, thanks Anna Bligh!
calltaker did a good job considering what little information he had to use
What many don't realize is that while the EMD is asking questions, the despatcher next to him/her is already sending an ambulance.
All these questions need to be asked so that an ambulance is either sent lights and sirens or not.
Quite often an ambulance rocks up with the caller still on the phone.
Listen to the patient....no slurred speech, no pain, not complaining of anything specific, doesn't sound short of breath.
A brilliant call. Firstly from the call taker involved. Well done - i relate to this all the time - I too am a 000 Calltaker & this sounded like one of those calls where you just have NO IDEA where its leading too.....'Not Well' will not get you a Code 1 Ambulance. Secondly, a call from members of the public who cannot provide accurate information to the emergency services. At no point did i think this warranted an "Emergency Light s & Sirens Response" Very frustrating.
Complete sympathy for the 000 operator. I do this for the police, talk with the ambulance regularly and have no tolerance for this crap. Never send a crew to an unknown situation
I'm an EMD in the UK, the EMD on this call did well, trying to assertain what the problem was, but you can only go so far in questioning if the caller, or the patient doesnt know. With the info given from the call, i would have gone card 26 sick person.
I'm a little mad that the EMD lost his job over this. Sounds to me he did everything correctly. When people ring up saying: "I don't know what happened, I just heard funny noises, please send and ambulance," makes the job even harder. The EMD even spoke to the conscious, breathing (able to walk) patient. MPDS or EMDs do not dispatch the helicopter, doctors, and ambulances lights and sirens within 10seconds for "I don't know what happened". I thought it was a hoax to be honest.
"A scatterbrain" ? That's harsh!
She was an 80yr old lady. Considering the circumstances she held it together remarkably well. You can't expect someone in that situation to speak with eloquence and clarity. He son had suffered an embolic stroke and later suffered a second one. These can kill and he's been left permanently brain damaged! Stroke victims MUST receive attention quickly. Hardly the equivalent of spilling sugar. He can no longer read and subsequently had to leave his job.
haha this came up as a suggested video despite it being so old. not sure why. but my opinion i totally sympathise with the call taker involved in this here. it wouldn't have hurt based on the information to dispatch someone code 3)low priority) to just swing by the address and make sure there was nothing seriously wrong medicly. but to have lost his job over it for simply being cautious about sending a crew is wrong. he quite rightly wanted to get as much information as he could first especially the fact the old woman kept changing her story and was so vague
Hey Anna,
Yep, I can understand that. I guess that a hundred things go through your mind when you take a call like that. "shoulda coulda woulda" says it all, aye. I have every sympathy for all parties in this.
Thanks for your comment.
belojama
No, he didn't lose his temper, but any EMD can expect to be challenged by situations like these from time to time, and some far more demanding. The ability to hold one's temper, is an essential prerequisite character profile for this role. Just an open question, do you think the EMD did enough to ease the anxiety of the elderly mother? And yes, strategic protocol and timing will always be determined by the limitation in resources.
Considering the mother of the pt was an extremely poor historian and unable to portray events leading up to the incident, I think the dispatcher did a damn good job. The Ambulance have a limited amount of resources in each area of operation and at least this EMD was trying to ascertain the validity of the call. All too often Ambulances are despatched to stubbed toes or shaving cuts (without any exaggeration or word of a lie), when there is a cardiac arrest or AMI just around the corner.
What they should have done is selected the mythical "he had a few drinks and i heard a weird noise from the next room" card and he still wouldn't have agot a priority response... Signal 3, back of the cue!
I must say that when I started listening to this I knew the women was joking due to the anxiousness of her voice. However what she was saying wasn't making a lot of sense. It is extremely hard at the start of the video to identify that anything was wrong. Even the patient stated he had no injuries. Concern arises for me about 1/2 way through the video when the mother says she has never seen him act like this before. Family always knows best and if they say something is off then there usually tends to be something wrong. I think that the mother was just very scared and anxious and unable to clearly say what was going on which makes it very difficult for the call taker to identify the issue. I do not think he should have lost his job. Given the evidence of the information given I don't feel he did anything wrong.
Thats not what the caller said, she she heard a noise in the other room but didn't bother to have a look, then said he had a few drinks, what are you supposed to do with this?
No idea why this man lost his job. Sounds to me like he did everything right, gave her correct advice, dispatched a crew. They can't send ICP's and doctors code 1 to every caller that says "he's just acting strange".
0.53 - dispatcher may feel he had a stroke or a seizure event but cannot ask, but she also said he has a drink and then moved to ?fall. the patient almost says he cant see....@ 3.16 as he was cut off
Where's the Act that outlines this provision required of EMDs?
shows how smart some of us qlders are lol
never worked as an ambo or a despatcher have you?
I have a certain sympathy for the operator. The Ambos are under pressure and if they're sent on a wild goose chase, another genuine call could result in a fatality.
I've heard Ambos being called by people who are drunk and just want a lift home, or someone can't get the lid off a bottle...really dumbarse stupid calls. This time the dispatcher lacked empathy, he misread the call and got it completely wrong. Should he have lost his job, idk, probably not, imo!
I feel so sorry for the 000 call taker. Completey daft call.
@Shazza036 My advice take the initial complaint and run with it. Don't over intellectualise it like this kid did. I know you are going through your training now and you want to be precise but really when you are out on your own do you want to get straight 'A's' or do you want to save a life?
Having a call not go to queue for almost 5 minutes is unacceptable in terms of both patient outcome and community expectations.
@Shazza036 An 'echo' response for a conscious and breathing patient? From her initial statement that "he's had a few drinks and is acting funny" would have lead me to 'overdose' as the chief complaint. But a protocol 28 is not far off the mark either. Either way this man would have gotten a lights and sirens response whether you chose any of the responses you have mentioned -and that's the end result.
think the protocol would have been if the patient had completed his sentence at 03.14
Ben Memes Yes but within 1 minutes 30 seconds you have a confirmed unwitnessed fall and a request of an Ambulance. His mother is not a medical professional and does not how to describe the presenting condition. I don't know why he lost his job either. It all seemed pretty logical from my end, on what he was saying - but from their end very hard to weigh up what was happening. The Ambulance have to maintain balance--knowing what emergency jobs are taking place and who to allocate and have as much reasoning as they need. An unwitnessed fall is enough reasoning to begin with to put the call through. This is where lies public education: realizing a stroke. At the minimum at least someone realized something was wrong... maybe not the seriousness of it... but that something was wrong and needed to be done.
Obviously an american - we dont just send everyone lights abd sirens here. We know you guys love you adrenaline rushed 2 ladder trucks and an angine company + an ambulance when we can find one responses. They would have got an ambulance right away, but the job being low acuity (and there is no other way you can call it based on the scant information from the call) would have been diverted multiple times to cases where there was an identified life threat, not "Heard a noise in the next room"
George, you obviously have no concept of protocols, procedures or QAS policies...
I think this clip is a pile of crap...well done tho...our comms are better than this!!
Is everyone in society getting so precious these days that as soon as you spill some sugar on the kitchen bench we feel the need to call emergency services just because our taxes pay for it.
From a clinical point of view, the caller was a scatterbrain.
Caller states the patient is conscious, not injured and not a psych case and he even talks coherently to the operator......so he's not seriously ill or injured which makes me think why they called the ambulance...simple, because they can.
Must admit, when the dispatch operator asked "Is this a joke?" I just wanted to belt them in the mouth. Regardless of what info you can get out of the caller, it's the law here to treat ALL calls to triple-000 as serious and real until proven otherwise. Yes, it is exceedingly annoying and stupid to misuse the emergency number BUT people have been in genuine peril who have later died as a result of deliberate inaction of the emergency services simply because the call for help was dismissed as a hoax.
That's the problem with anything that effects the brain. There is such a thing as 'Silent Stroke' where like 'Silent Heart Attacks', the patient and those around them would have NO KNOWLEDGE of what has happened. In this case because the patient had been drinking, makes it even harder to determine.
And stroke is serious because there is only a very small window in which to reverse the damage done to the brain - the gap is only 4 hours. After that, the damage is lifelong and can even be fatal.
At least QAS has it's separate non-urgent response phone number on their units. Ours here in SA just say 000.
It sounds like it was the patient that asked "Is this a joke?", not the EMD.
It wasn't the dispatcher who asked that. It was the son.
Considering the mother of the pt was an extremely poor historian and unable to portray events leading up to the incident, I think the dispatcher did a damn good job. The Ambulance have a limited amount of resources in each area of operation and at least this EMD was trying to ascertain the validity of the call. All too often Ambulances are despatched to stubbed toes or shaving cuts (without any exaggeration or word of a lie), when there is a cardiac arrest or AMI just around the corner.