“48 year old male, nausea”
Yes, you read correctly, nausea, nothing else; no other symptoms, or at least no other symptoms that we were privy to. I hoped there was something else; surely nausea was not something worthy of an EMERGENCY ambulance. After waiting 5 minutes for the recycling lorry to edge down the road we were trying to access, we pulled up outside the house. The garden was overgrown; an old sofa, upside-down, was protruding from the hedge, and various pieces of broken wood and piles of rubbish were scattered up the crazy-paved path. The flaking paint around the rotten doorframe told us all we needed to know about what the house was like inside. There was a porch stopping us from accessing the front door so we rang the bell. Then we rang it again. And again. Eventually our patient, sporting a lovely string vest and trousers held high up his mid-drift, appeared. Using a tissue he opened the door, and then dropped said tissue on the floor. I looked down, carefully stepping over the sea of clean tissues and into the hallway.
The smell was grim! It was kind of stale with a hint of ammonia and rotten food; nothing new to my senses but unpleasant all the same. Clearly there were social issues at play here as well as medical. We went into the living where our patient had wondered off.
“Take a seat”
I looked around… "I’m OK thank you, been sat down for ages” (massive lie!)
“So, what’s the problem today?”
“I feel really sick”
“How long have you felt sick?”
“Since I woke up”
“And how long ago was that?”
“About an hour ago”
“Have you phoned your GP?” (my tone was already quite short and frustrated!)
“Yes”
"And…"
“There was a queue on the phone so I couldn’t get through”
“So what do you want us to do?”
“I don’t know”
Well if he didn’t know why he called an ambulance, what the hell do we know?! There was no way I was going to take him to hospital. Despite me asking about every symptom I could think of he had none. No vomiting, no pain, no dizziness, no headache, no urinary symptoms, nothing! I saw an old PRF on the sideboard.
“You had an ambulance last night?”
“Yes”
“Why?” I asked whilst I was reading.
“I felt sick”
I decided to phone the GP, there was indeed a queue to talk, and I was 16th in line. There was no way I was going to wait.
“OK then sir, let's go to the ambulance and we’ll pop you round to the GP, grab your shoes and your keys”
I started scribbling my paperwork to hand to the Doc as we drove off down the road. 100 yards and we turned left, 50 yards and we stopped. Yep… journey time to the GP by ambulance was 42 seconds. It would have taken a whole 2 minutes to walk... Just sayin’.
I sat him in the waiting room and went for chat with the receptionist. After a slight battle to let me see a GP rather than divulge his entire medical history to her, she buzzed me through. I told the Doc that the string vest in the waiting room was feeling sick and had had 2 ambulances because there was no answer on the phone. He rolled his eyes and said a sarcastic thank you! We bid farewell to our time-waster and went grumbling back to our truck.
Seriously… TRIAGE. I know it’s a French word but surely that call could have been downgraded to ‘make your own way’. As much as I want to scream at the people who pick up the phone, dial 999 and say ‘I feel sick’, I equally want to scream at the person who says ‘sure thing, an ambulance is on the way’. What is the problem with saying ‘No’?! This guy didn’t need an ambulance; he didn’t even need the GP. He said what was wrong, he felt sick. So what! We are humans, we feel sick from time to time. We live in far too much of a nanny-state where the fear of something going wrong far outweighs common sense. One of the drawbacks of a totally free health care system is that it is vulnerable to abuse, and abuse it gets. I think the ambulance service in general needs a new PR department. The Fire Service got it right with their various fire safety campaigns. We need to follow suit with educating people what is and isn’t an emergency.