Experiences of ambulance service

I thought this could be an interesting topic for discussionas personally in my opinion I think it is a wonderful service.

Last night i was stressed out which brought on a fairly bad Asthma attack, I was trying to deal with it as i really did not want to cause a drama etc, I was in on my own and my salbutamol was not working with the spacer and i knew i wasgetting worse - partly beause i was panicing as well as i really was scared.

I had to phone myself an ambulance and was in an awful state, it turned up so quickly and they two guys did a wonderful job and i'm so so grateful, they did't make me feel like a nuisance, they got me to relax and cam down took me to hospital to be checked over and really helped as much as i felt i was being a nuisance.

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The Coventry and Warwickshire ambulances are fantastic too. We required an ambulance on Friday morning after my 7 yr old daughter had a massive attack.A fast response car arrived within 3 mins closely followed by a paramedic ambulance. We had 3 paramedics and a trainee and the care Chloe recieved was fantastic. Chloes just moved from ITU to Hdu so things are improving. With SATS of 61 when they arrived she has made fantastic progress. I can't thank them enough. Nikki xx

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ambulance service

my daughter had to be transferred from one hospital to another last week urgently and an ambulance arrived and was so good with her she relaxed with them. unfortunaltely we still dont know whats wrong with her and there is no improvement and i wish the hospital team were as good at dealing and solving the mystery as the ambulance service were caring and considerate.

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Hey all!

Not to put a nail in the wood but i tend to disagree, the paramedics are great don't get me wrong i think most of the problem lays with the control room! i have type two brittle asthma and have oxygen, eipens neb ect ect and the amount of times family/ friends have phone for ambulances and they have take 30 - 50 mins to come is hurrendous! hurredenous in everyway! my consultant tried to sort it out my writing to the ambulance service and putting me on a proity list, but that did nothing and seem just to confuse the situation!

ah well i am still here to tell the tail which i supose is the most important thing, thanks to amazing local ITU teams!

hope everyone is well, just eascaped ITU, AGAIN! and hope to be home tomoz!!

love rob!

(Message edited by CathBear 25.09.07 at 19:21)

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Hiya,

I required an ambulance to move me from one ICU to another. To do this in the quickest time possible my ambulance was flanked with two police cars, four police motorcyclists and my parents Jag bringing up the rear.

All the cars on the motorway pulled over but for a determined Mini driver, who insisted on driving painfully slowly in front of the ambulance, regardless of the sirens and honking from my fleet! One officer took great offence to this, and when the mini finally pulled over he turned back, gave the guy a massive fine, then floored his bike to catch up with the ambulance- it made his day!

Later it was revealed that the ventilator tubing -large enough to fill my entire airway- had become kinked on the journey, blocking all oxygen to my lungs despite the efforts from the ambulance crew.

So yes, some silly errors were made that day but we are human, we do make mistakes and most importantly I owe my life to those guys- for without my team of London docs & consultants there would be no Wheezysurf, and I am very grateful!

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Well my experiences with Coventry and Warwickshire ambulance service are a bit different to Nikki's. An ambulance once took nearly 3 hours to take me to hospital and I was losing consciousness during this time which resulted in an another ITU admission. Another time they reused the same needles on me, which even they themselves acknowlege they shouldnt have done. Once they were very rude to my mother who was very concerned about me so this just made her more upset. But apart from that they are usally ok.

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Two recent ambulance experiences in the south - one arrived very rapidly and was fantastically helpful, the other took waaay too long (to be fair it was kicking-out time on a Friday night) and one of the crew managed to insult a colleague of mine (he did receive an apology). It very much varies according to the individual crew and the time of day/night when the ambulance is called.