Has anyone had to phone 999 for an ambulance lately?

I had to call an ambulance for my wife at lunchtime. She had a major operation 5 days ago, and today (now at home), she suffered severe pains indicating potentially serious complications. She phoned the ward she had been discharged from and they said phone A&E. I phoned A&E who said bring her in. However, my wife was now bent double in pain and wailing in agony like an animal. There was no way I could take her in my car as the onset of pain was very rapid and was seemingly out of control. I had no option to dial 999.

I was put through very quickly to a lovely lady who asked a series of questions which she in-putted into her PC. Sadly my wife was breathing, was conscious and wasn't bleeding. So the 'computer said no' despite the LAS operator clearly hearing my wife in pain. The 999 operator apologised and said she would pass our details to NHS Direct and someone from there would phone to make a further assessment. I expressed my disgust as I have had previous experience and know that NHS Direct can take hours to phone back. The 999 lady advised I redial 999 if the NHS people hadn't called me within 15 minutes.

To cut a long and repetitious story short, I had to dial 999 on three occasions pleading with a LAS supervisor that serious damage could be happening to my post op wife who was in serious pain. On hearing my pitiful pleading and my wife's even more pitiful screams of pain, the supervisor relented & said an ambulance would be sent. One eventually arrived within minutes, but over one hour from the initial request for help.

The paramedics, A&E staff and even the LAS operators were all fantastic, but my God, how the hell have we got to a stage where a computer makes clinical decisions based on information in-putted by non medical staff? I know lots of people take the mickey re ambulance requests, but LAS management's response to the 'time wasters' problem seems to involve removing all human intervention when dealing with 999 calls. It's a bloody disgrace!

Somebody called an ambulance for me when I had a bad fall in Uxbridge a month ago. One ambulance was passing close by, saw the crowd so came to have a look to see if they were needed. So an ambulance was there within 2 minutes of my fall. They had to wait for another ambulance as they needed 3 people to put me on a spinal board, but even the second ambulance turned up within a very short time.

I was extremely impressed with the ambulance service and the staff were amazing.

i work for the NHS (subbie) and see first hand how some of the cuts are impacting on patients,most genuine ones still get the best treatment and a lot of wasters are being told no.
phone jockies are told to deny service if they think it,s not a real emergency.
Sot,it may be worth getting hold of a manager and talking to them as a lot of elderly people are far too polite to ring more than once and next time ............

Considering that you were a fire brigade officer for some time I am surprised at your approach to an emergency close to home. Your previous experience with the health service as you mention was not very good. Why then did you not resort to describing your wife's symptoms in such a way that the computer would have to recognise it. Breathing- not YES but "with difficulty" bleeding not NO but "suspected internal bleeding" conscious not YES but "having difficulty concentrating. I am sure your wife was close to all of these answers and you were in charge and had to make the decisions for her.
No doubt you will consider this attitude is beneath you to use and feel it is dishonest. The computer has no feelings and only answers what it is fed.. and in today's society one has to forget the old ( last 50 years) of good manners and consider one's own problems, and fight back. I am very pleased that your wife did recieve attention , but don't blame the folks 100% who you contact. They are only doing the job they have been taught, in the same way you were taught how to hold a hose properly. Some times we are our own worst enemy trying to install our will upon others albeit
for the benefit of our own loved ones.

I've been through this scenario a few times in the last few years with my wife. As you say, they will only send an Ambulance out if you've been stabbed or similar. And when they do reluctantly send one out they inform you that it will not be under blue lights.

They seem to think that you can get a person in serious pain after having been discharged from hospital too early (that's another story) in a small family car. Mine had complications after major spinal surgery (6 hours on the table each time) and on 2 out of 4 occasions had to go back within days. Once they sent an Ambulance, once they refused. On the time they refused, when we got to Hillingdon A&E there were 4 Ambulances outside A&E doing nothing.

When the Ambulance does turn up they are fantastic, as mentioned above, but the rules are far too strict.

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Lets be careful out there !

Hope your wife gets well again soon SOT....

Can only assume you called at a very busy time and as such the service had to work to an urgent clinical need timetable rather than next in the Q.

It's nots like they deliberately with held cover and I assume there were (according to their check list) more urgent cases they had to deal with first.

Ambulances and the people that man them are not cheap. We could of course increase the numbers of them but then that cost would have to be levied further onto taxation or something else would have to be cut......

And we all know how well that would go down......

My brother rang 999 for my 78 year old dad in Surrey last month. He was "triaged" over the phone and they didn't send an ambulance. It turned out he was having a heart attack. He had a triple bypass just over a week later.

Edwinnobby - You are right, I should have played the system and sexed-up her symptoms, but would not want to 'steal' an ambulance from a more life threatening patient

It turns out that the London Ambulance Service have scrapped their category B response ( serious but not life threatening). So now you have to be placed in one of the two remaining categories

cat A (immediately life threatening), or
cat C (everything not Cat A).

So now there is nowhere to place anyone - like my wife - who was serious but not immediately life threatening except in the 'miscellaneous' category. This sound like a cynical measure to manipulate targets and lower costs, but it is plainly wrong (& dangerous) to remove the human element from the triage system

So despite my wife returning home from major surgery 5 days before the onset of this traumatic onset of pain, as she wasn't considered 'in immediate threat of death', so the computer said "no" , so the LAS controllers had no choice other than put her in Cat C, the same category as those suffering with splinters, boils and kids with saucepans stuck on their heads. This category apparently attracts a call back from NHS direct - incidentally, we received no such call within the 1hr and 15 minutes between our first 999 call and the ambulance arriving.

So basically, if you don't have suitable private transport you're on your own. I can imagine some households it could be bus or motorbike with a patient just released from hospital. What a dreadful state of affairs to get into.

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Lets be careful out there !