Should an ambulance be dispatched to every 999 call?

WHEN my mother had a heart attack, I was still on the line to the emergency services when a highly trained paramedic with an expertise in cardiac arrests arrived at her flat shortly after midnight. From connection to the ambulance service to Danny’s arrival in an estate car took 94 seconds. Carrying equipment, he ran up four flights of stairs to save my mother’s life. He stayed by her side, monitoring her for nearly two hours, before he decided she was stable enough to go to hospital. Had an ambulance been dispatched first, she would not be with us. It is the quality of care and speed of arrival at the scene of the incident that matters most.

Name and address supplied.

IT Is not the vehicle that provides the care, it is the skilled personnel of the ambulance service. By dispatching a car, motorcycle or bicycle to an incident, a victim can be helped immediately by a first responder. An additional benefit is that the patient’s

condition can be assessed and if needed the following ambulance can then be diverted to a more critically affected person. If more people had a knowledge of first aid, as do all children in Scandinavia, there would not be so many unnecessary emergency calls for an ambulance and the burden on the NHS would be reduced significantly.

ANTON KING, Cambridge.

CALL 999 ... get Skype (Mail). And then you make your own way to hospital, where the elderly are left on trollies for hours.

BRIAN BEST, High Wycombe, Bucks. I AM 96 and live alone, but I do pay to have a red button to press in an emergency. Last week, I fell and was unable to get up. An ambulance was called, and they said they were very busy, but one came after just 15 minutes. In no time I was on my feet and, apart from a sore and bruised knee, ready to carry on. I can’t speak too highly of the NHS. Miss B. E. G. HOTCHKISS,

Folkestone, Kent.

MY SON is an ambulance driver and I know how hard they work, sometimes for 12 or 14 hours, as you can’t leave a situation just because your shift has ended. Don’t knock our emergency crews: just be grateful there are people who are ready, willing and able to save our lives when necessary.

PAULINE KERRIDGE, Grays, Essex. THERE have never been enough passenger–carrying ambulances to attend every call. If one turns up there is an expectation that the patient is going to be ferried to hospital, blue lights blazing. There are an enormous number of wasteful 999 calls and some see emergency ambulances as taxis to take them to hospital, even though they could make their own way there. In other parts of the world, injured people are dropped in the back of pick-up trucks, so we should be grateful for our ambulance service.

PAUL CRABTREE, Tewkesbury, Glos.