Ambulances being called for shaving cuts

Trivial calls are clogging up system

‘This is not a taxi service’

UP to half of all calls to the National Ambulance Service are unnecessary and are ‘clogging up the system’ leaving paramedics unavailable to respond to more urgent cases, a paramedic union representative has said.

It follows reports of ambulances being called out for minor issues such as broken nails or cuts while shaving.

However, the National Ambulance Serive (NAS) said it ‘can’t discredit’ any calls by a member of the public and have to ‘thoroughly check and respond to each emergency call’.

Ted Kenny, Siptu sector organiser for the NAS, said they would estimate that approximately 50% of calls made to the service ‘aren’t classified as emergency calls’. He said: ‘When ambulances attend [these calls], they tie-up ambulances for two or three or four hours at a time. That then equates to ambulances not being available for urgent calls.

‘Our first-hand incidents are coming from the paramedics themselves, whereby they were called out to someone that had a broken toenail, someone that cut their leg when they were shaving. Some with a broken finger.

‘We have people who actually would say they would drive to their local GP. The GP says fair enough, you have to be referred to an emergency department. They will drive home instead of driving to the ED and when they get home they call an ambulance.

‘The NAS is not a taxi service at the end of the day. The amount of calls that are coming in to the NAS service that doesn’t necessitate an ambulance is very, very alarming.

‘The general public would want to realise how alarming it is because some day someone will ring for an ambulance and there’ll be no ambulance there.

‘It will be serious like someone getting a cardiac arrest and there’s no ambulance and they have to wait for hours because these types of calls are clogging up the system.’

Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, a spokesman for the National Ambulance Service Representative Association (NASRA), said: ‘I’ve had the guy with the broken nail putting up the cabinet and what do you do? He has called the ambulance out, you are already there. Even if you decide you are going to leave him there, you have to go through a process, you’ve got to make sure he is not going to die of his broken nail after you go.

‘If that guy drops dead of a heart attack, his family will say you convinced him not to go and you didn’t give him a thorough examination.

‘The reality is, even when you go out to patients who say “really I shouldn’t have called you, I’m sorry”, you still have to go through a process.’

The spokesman said that they would still have to do two sets of observations on that patient and even if the decision is made not to transport the patient to ED, they could still be with the patient for 30 minutes.

Mr Kenny said he believes that there is a perception out there that if you call an ambulance, you are likely to get through the ED faster ‘but that’s not actually the case’.

In a statement, the NAS said every call made to 112/999 is ‘triaged and treated appropriately’.

‘If services are tied up unnecessarily at a call, it can mean that they may have been unable to get to another destination in the case of a real emergency. If another call comes in, there may be a delay in getting the services there which could put lives at risk.

‘However, the National Ambulance Service cannot discredit any calls received by a member of the public and we have to thoroughly check and respond to each emergency call.’

‘You have to go through a process’