Ambulance workers modify a stretcher as different ambulances wait exterior the Royal London Hospital in east London, Jan. 4, 2023. Credit score: AP Picture/Alastair Grant, File
In case your pet alligator escapes, do not name for an ambulance—except it has sunk its enamel into somebody.
That is the message from the Welsh Ambulance Service in a plea to get individuals to cease phoning with non-emergencies.
With public well being providers stretched skinny within the U.Ok., there isn’t any scarcity of anecdotes about individuals affected by true well being emergencies who wait hours for medical care—whether or not from paramedics or a hospital physician. However the ambulance service mentioned 15% of its 426,000 calls final yr—175 a day—weren’t pressing. Some weren’t even health-related and had been removed from being issues of life and loss of life.
There was a name a few chipped tooth (“it’s starting to throb”), a bloody toe (“I’ve cut my little nail on the toe and I’ve nipped across the top of it.”) and an individual who caught their finger in {an electrical} socket who gave the impression to be high quality (“I’m worried that I could be electrocuted”).
Then there was the decision Emma Worrall took final yr that she will not quickly overlook.
“I remember saying ‘alligator?’ and my call-taker supervisor just looked at me and was like, ‘What is going on in your call?'” Worrall mentioned.
As a dispatcher in a busy name heart in Wales, Worrall needs to be unflappable, affected person and in a position to effectively deal with probably the most nerve-racking calls by which a delay of seconds or minutes may very well be the distinction between life and loss of life.
She understands that some individuals have a distinct gauge of what’s life-threatening and an emergency. However it’s nonetheless irritating when somebody telephones the emergency quantity to say they’re locked out of their home and chilly or their canine jumped in a river and will not swim again—calls she additionally fielded.
“We just ask everybody to find alternative pathways before phoning for an ambulance,” she mentioned. “The ambulance service is for those who are experiencing life-threatening problems.”
Worrall’s craziest name got here one afternoon when a person phoned to say his son’s pet alligator had escaped and was hiding below the couch.
“I asked if he’d been hurt, and he said, no. he was scared,” Worrall recounted.
He needed paramedics to assist him corral the toothy reptile.
“I told him that we wouldn’t be sending an ambulance for something like that. And he said, ‘So you’re not going to send me any help until I get bit, is that right?’ I went, ‘That’s correct.'”
The Welsh Ambulance Service is not alone in publicizing the wacky calls they received final yr. The South Western Ambulance Service in England this week mentioned greater than 1 / 4 of the 1 million-plus calls it fielded final yr didn’t advantage sending assist.
The non-emergency calls included an individual on the lookout for help find their strolling stick, a affected person who had fallen off a chair—who was already within the hospital—and a lady who complained of getting a “horrendous nightmare.”
Emergency calls “are for situations where minutes matter and lives are at risk,” mentioned William Lee, assistant operations director at South Western Ambulance. “Inappropriate calls tie up our emergency lines and divert valuable resources away from those in genuine need.”
Worrall was gobsmacked the gator caller thought paramedics had been the panacea for his downside. When she received off the cellphone, she took a brief break and shared the story along with her amused colleagues.
“We did have a little chat about that and, yeah, back to work I went,” she mentioned. “On to the next call.”
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A runaway alligator and different non-emergencies that hampered UK ambulance dispatchers (2025, February 1)
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