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by rich_sasha 220 days ago
My cousin's 3yo daughter stopped breathing one night, woke up struggling for breath, turning blue. They called the ambulance. Dispatcher said, 3 hr wait, and pretty please get off the phone, as there's a queue of callers.

She started breathing again after a few minutes and seems fine, but they left the UK not long after that.
3 comments
verelo 220 days ago
That’s wild. I fell off my garage roof almost 2 weeks back. My wife called the ambulance, they arrived within 20 minutes. We are in rural Ontario, 30 minutes from the nearest hospital, on a dirt road that is privately owned and maintained. I expected over an hour.

I plan to make a trip in to the ambulance hall and fire hall this week and say thanks. I am ok, fractured vertebrae, but honestly i just am so grateful for the public service they provide.

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pfannkuchen 220 days ago
The dispatcher must not have understood right? This is like evil levels of incompetence otherwise, because the system can’t possibly be designed to do that right? So the dispatcher must have been in the wrong, but to make the dispatcher not completely evil we have to make her merely stupid and/or careless. That’s terrifying. Where did they go to if you don’t mind me asking?
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roryirvine 220 days ago
Yeah. Ambulance services have been hard-pressed in the UK in recent years, especially in the immediate aftermath of Covid - but this should very clearly have been a Category 1 call (unconscious, difficulty breathing, or heart attack symptoms).

Last month in England (each country in the UK has its own stats), the mean response time (from dialling 999 to the ambulance arriving) for Cat 1 was 8 mins 1 second, and the 90th %ile time was 14m18s. That's a bit above the target response time of 7 mins, but a 3 hour wait strongly suggests a miscategorisation.

"Is the patient breathing? Are they conscious?" are literally the first words on the dispatcher's script, so something seems to have gone terribly wrong here.

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rich_sasha 219 days ago
As I understand, the dispatcher simply said there ain't no ambulances around. It was 2024 - so well after COVID (though the NHS never really recovered, it seems).

They took her to the nearest hospital, in Oxford, next morning. She seemed fine. Doctors said, can't reproduce the bug, ticket closed.

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tetris11 219 days ago
London, last year - 90 minute wait for an ambulance to the hospital 10 minutes away.

We called an Uber

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