Heart Attack Victim’s Ambulance Breaks Down

File this under “unfortunate.”

A helicopter was called to ferry a Wiltshire man to hospital after an ambulance broke down on the M4 [motorway].

Aside from the unrealiability of motor vehicles, another issue is traffic. At any given moment, in any given big city, an ambulance could be stuck in a traffic jam. From Nee Naw, a blog about work in the London Ambulance’s control room.

“Help will be with you as soon as possible” is supposed to be our answer to anything like that. I feel sorry for the callers when I say this, because what they really want to hear is a precise rundown such as “right, the ambulance is now leaving Islington ambulance station, it’ll be with you in three minutes and twenty one seconds”. The reason we can’t say this is because the ambulance might get stuck in traffic, break down, or be rerouted to a higher priority call, and if I tell a caller that an ambulance is three minutes away and none materialises, then I’ve lied, and that caller is quite free to sue me. (And yes, it would be me, not the Ambulance Service, because by telling them that, I would have broken protocol).

Looks like there’s no guarantees in life, except for getting sued.

Tags: ambulances, emergency medical technicians, emt, heart, heart disease, diseases, illness, health, traffic jams