News story and audio of call here
The call has gone a bit viral and many people seem to be criticizing the 911 Dispatchers insistence on being told a fairly detailed scenario before dispatching the ambulance. Is this level of questioning before sending an ambulance normal in a life and death dispatch situation?
It wants me to subscribe or log in to read the story. Not gonna do it. Do you have a link to a free news article about it?
Audio here
StoryI can’t listen to the recording and from reading the details in various reports (including the OP) I don’t see any indication that the call was processed incorrectly.
I’m going by my understanding of UK emergency services procedure, but they usually dispatch an ambulance as soon as the location is known, then stay on the line to gather additional information and give advice. Perhaps the operator simply didn’t make this clear.
Also, how long did it take for help to arrive? I can’t find any mention of this critical detail.
You need to listen to the call. She is not indicating she is prepared to dispatch an ambulance until all her questions have been fully answered.
I’m a supervisor in a 9-1-1 center, but not in the center that handled this calls
Standard questioning requires:
**Location **- cannot possibly send any help if you don’t know where to send it
Nature of what is happening - mandatory for safety of responding units and to send correct type of help
for cetain call types - Whether weapons were involved - again for responder safety
Age and Sex of patient for medical emergencies - makes a difference in determining level of urgency in some call types
for medical calls - Whether patient is conscious
for medical calls - Whether patient is breathing normally
Call back phone number for complainant
**Name **of complainant - considered optional in some jurisdictions
All of this is before dispatch occurs. There are other questions that may be asked after a call is sent for dispatch.
So the call was NOT processed correctly. The call taker did not ask the call back number. (Though sometimes they edit out such information from publicly released calls). Otherwise she hit on each relevant point.
Unfortunately the initial caller freaks out at the location question and it only gets worse from there. And clarity of the cell phone connection often sounds worse on live audio than on the recording so the phone cutting out a bit wasn’t helping things one bit.
I must be missing something. I thought the whole purpose of an emergency response team is to provide for the needs of the person at risk, not to provide a comfy job and income for the responders and the highly profitable response industry… If they are unwilling to face a degree of risk, they should have chosen a different profession. It’s like saying firemen are not to exceed the speed limit, for their own safety, when proceeding to a blazing apartment building with children screaming out the windows…
You’ve got to be kidding.
A paramedic with a bullet in their head is pretty damn useless at at providing for anybody’s needs.
Edit: Highly profitable? WTF?
A degree of risk does not mean any amount of risk, nor does it mean willfully going without information that could be used to mitigate that risk.
It also means sending the right people in the right order. If there’s a weapon involved, the correct person to go in first is not an unarmed EMT.
A fire engine on its side in the middle of an intersection with firefighters trapped inside it will not help those children escape.
I have actually answered a 9-1-1 call where the caller said, “I need an ambulance. Someone has been shot. Just send an ambulance. Do not send the police.”
No paramedic in his right mind would go to that call without police securing the scene first.
Responder safety comes first. Dead or injured responders just compound the emergency.
In my jurisdiction and many others the primary response agencies (Police, Fire, Medical) are all government entities. No profit issue. EMS is mandated to charge to try to break even but the other services don’t send a bill.
As in any 9-1-1 center there are ancillary responders that are occasionally called upon (tow truck, specialized animal control like beekeepers, locksmiths, heavy equipment operators, plumbers, etc…) that are in a for profit business. But there is no way they could support a business only on waiting for the call outs from the 9-1-1 center.
That’s interesting, it’s very different from how UK emergency services work (although I’m prepared to be corrected on my understanding of UK policy).
I presume though that if someone dialled 911, only started to give you the details, such as location, then the line went dead, you’d dispatch someone (who/how many depending on current understanding of the situation), right?
Just chiming in with experience from the UK. If you call an ambulance, the dispatcher specifically says “I’m going to ask you a few questions, but this will not delay the ambulance which is already on its way”. They will then start to ask questions like what happened, what’s the nature of the injury, is the injured person breathing and so on and will relay this information to the paramedics. But the ambulance is already on its way.
I always feel the same a the OP when I hear 911 tapes.
I live in a small town. A man felt suddenly ill in church and 911 was called. The first big issue was the street address of the church, which people often don’t know*. The comedy of the dispatcher insisting she could not send an ambulance was that the ambulance company garage was on the next block! She simply would not accept “it’s the Baptist church on Elm Street” ( a street that has 4 blocks!!!)
*Do you know the street address of your local grocery store? City Hall? Your kid’s school? I don’t.
Location–obviously a must. So she started off good. But then things quickly went off the rails.
She admits that she doesn’t know yet what’s going on. But instead of asking for that information, she asks for the caller’s name!!! She doesn’t need his name; that information is irrelevant to determining the nature of the emergency.
Nature of what is happening–in theory, you’re correct. However, the call-taker did not handle this portion correctly. She keeps trying to find out what happened. But by the 90-second mark, she has been told three times by two different people that the people on the scene do not know what happened. The “fog of war” is a very real thing. At some point, you’ve got to accept that (A) you do not have all the information, (B) that you may never have all the information, (C) even if you could get all the information it would take too long, and (D) you’ve got to be willing to make the best decision you can, knowing that your knowledge is incomplete. This woman clearly was not willing to do that. She wasted a full minute with irrelevant details.
And then at the 2:30 mark, she asks for confirmation on something that she was told at the beginning of the call!
She should have taken steps within the first minute of the call to dispatch an ambulance, and THEN tried to get more details. Her behavior was totally inexcusable.
So no one has a problem with the fact that neither of the people actually on the scene, who found the poor guy, could be bothered to actually go anywhere near him to check if he might have been alive? Operator asks to check, dumbass whines she couldn’t possibly. Jeebus I’m glad these people aren’t my friends or employers.
And when an emergency operator asks you what happened, starting with your vacation plans is not the answer they’re looking for. How about relevant information? I don’t know what happened. There’s a dead body next to a turned over ATV in the woods. I get stupid shit like that all the damn time answering the emergency department phone. Well, we went to dinner, and got home around 8… I cut them off and say to tell me what prompted the need to call me right now.
Grocery stores are 6001 N Broadway, and 5343 N. Broadway. My CVS is at 6510 N Sheridan. Nearest church that I don’t attend but is the next block over, while I don’t know the exact address number, it’s the 6500 block of N Glenwood. My phone’s GPS will tell me the exact address wherever I’m at. If that’s not available I can walk out the front door and look at the number on the building, or send someone to do it. If I’m in an alley, the light poles have the address on them. I can also tell you whether the problem is north or south of my location, or if it’s an intersection, which corner, northeast, southwest, etc.
It’s a citizen’s responsibility to know where they are. You can’t put knowing where help is needed on the operator, who by your description of being in a small town, may be a county dispatch, who very well may be from another small town on the other end of the county and has never been to your town.
The caller’s name can be very useful to:
Getting an accurate idea of what happened may affect which response units are deployed. The fire department might not bring the right truck for the given situation without accurate info. The nearest ambulance might not have the equipment necessary for the given call. Not all police are armed. An accurate picture of what is happening helps get the right response to the scene as quickly as possible.
Though in this case, tragically the caller was correct and the person was dead that initial assessment is very often not correct. In my experience the majority of calls reporting someone is dead prove not to be accurate in the end. It is important to attempt to help the caller assist the patient, if possible, while the ambulance is responding.
“First, make sure he’s really dead.”
KA-BLAMM!!!
“Okay, now what?”
No, that really bothered me too. You have no way of knowing from ten yards away whether he’s breathing or not. And if he is, he might not be for much longer without help.
I GET panic, but for gods’ sake listen to the professional in your ear. That’s why you called, right? Because you thought they’d have better knowledge and resources to deal with an emergency than you do?
Was going to mention the psychological benefit of being able to use someone’s name when trying to calm them down enough to get the info you need, but Iggy beat me to it.