Decision Report 201800189

Summary

Mrs C complained on behalf of her father (Mr A) that the ambulance service unreasonably failed to dispatch an emergency ambulance. Mr A collapsed at work with a stroke and two calls were made for an ambulance, which took 50  minutes to arrive. Mrs C felt that the call handler who took the first call had not established sufficient information to determine whether Mr A was conscious or not, and that this affected the priority status of the ambulance response.

We took independent advice from a paramedic. We found that both phone calls were graded appropriately in view of the questions asked by the call handlers. However, in the first call it was not clearly established whether Mr A was conscious or not. Good practice would have been for the first call handler to have questioned the caller in more detail, which would have established an accurate consciousness level and may have affected the grading of the ambulance response. We upheld the complaint.

Recommendations

What we asked the organisation to do in this case:

• Apologise to Mrs C and Mr A for failing to fully establish from the call maker whether Mr A was conscious or not. The apology should meet the standards set out in the SPSO guidelines on apology available at https://www.spso.org.uk/leaflets-and-guidance.

What we said should change to put things right in future:

• The first call taker should ensure that, when talking to callers, they obtain accurate information about the condition of the patient so that an appropriate response level can be activated.

We have asked the organisation to provide us with evidence that they have implemented the recommendations we have made on this case by the deadline we set.