As we all know the NHS is under immense pressure and stress over recent years, the ambulance service being one factor that is at breaking point. As professionals working on emergency 999 ambulances we feel the stresses and strains of having to deal with our own failing dispatch software which is no longer fit for purpose but now with highly inappropriate 111 calls adding to the stacks of jobs we cannot get through. 

111 is advertised as an ‘advice and signposting’ service, what many don’t know is that a non clinical call taker goes through a triage system which allows them to code and dispatch an emergency ambulance. At no fault of the call takers fault, they have to follow an algorithm yet hundreds, thousands of these 111 calls get coded for a 999 emergency ambulance. 

We have been finding over the years that most of these calls are highly inappropriate and do not require an ambulance, many a time the public tell us on arrival ‘we never asked for an ambulance’, ‘we declined the ambulance,’ yet we are still going to these jobs shift after shift which are hardly ever life changing or life threatening. The public know 999 is an emergency line for an emergency ambulance, they also know 111 is for advice and signposting and call for that very reason. At no fault of their own they are getting sent 999 ambulances for non emergencies.

Over the years emergency ambulance staff are becoming drained and frustrated over these never ending 111 ambulance jobs that are heavily sitting on the job stack for us to go to, we do not have enough ‘clinical assessment team’ colleagues within our control room to get rid of the unnecessary ones as they also have numerous 999 jobs to get through.

The 999 system is broken, we do not need the added pressure of an ‘advice’ service breaking the service even more than it is.

We as frontline clinicians want to attend life threatening/life changing calls and get to them in safe, sufficient times with the relevant resources for those who truly need us. Not sent to inappropriate 111 calls where mostly we are not required and they could have been advised via the phone/online or pointed in the direction of the relevant help suitable for their needs via 111.

Ambulance staff are then stuck on scene having to give the advice, signpost to the correct services and then left doing extensive paperwork whilst emergency calls go uncovered. 

NHS England need to be looking at removing 111 from being able to code and dispatch emergency ambulances which would remove added pressures to a broken service and let us look after you as the general public correctly via the 999 system.