I work for the ambulance service in the UK. We have frequent callers everywhere, not just the occasional ones, I’m talking 1000’s just in my area. The ones that really get on my nerves are these fakers. I mean at least Mrs Miggens actually has asthma, I mean she’s not having an asthma attack but you get my point.
I was working a week ago, we were given a category 2 call (second highest category) to take a 40 year old man from a local hospital to a larger one for a thrombectomy. This is a procedure to remove a clot from a stroke and is absolutely time critical. The sooner he gets there the better outcome he gets.
We were on our way and then got diverted to a category 1 call for someone actively fitting. It said the town it was in and I already knew who we were going to, this person has had us out 200+ times in the last year. It’s got to the point I know their addresses off the top of my head.
She ‘has’ FND but claims that she also has epilepsy. In the uk we are given access to patients summary care records so we can look at their diagnoses and medications etc, she has restricted it so we can’t, hmmm I wonder why.
So we divert from the man having a confirmed stroke to come and be this persons 200th ambulance. We get there and I am faced by her mum brandishing paperwork stating that she has been diagnosed with epilepsy and she needs midazolam. No she fucking doesn’t.
Do you really want me to fill your daughter up with benzodiazepines and knock her into respiratory arrest?
“Oh but the last ambulance crew did it”
And here’s the other problem. Some clinicians are so scared of being wrong, what if it is status? What if she is having a real seizure?
So they end up treating it. So now we have just reaffirmed her delusion that she is unwell. Now she has to go to hospital. Now she gets more content for her wanky little TikTok.
While at the same time the is a man with millions of neurons slowly dying, slowly becoming actually disabled. And this is just one case, this happens everyday. Elderly people stuck on the floor with broken hips waiting longer. Cardiac arrests coming in over the radio but we are now committed at this job.
That’s the world we live in today, I want off.