Ambulance Victoria paramedics rush to triple-zero calls, find patients with non-urgent problems like nose bleeds

Paramedics have been sent to Victorians — under lights and sirens — complaining they can’t breathe while pinching their nose or coughing after brandy, among other minor matters that are wasting their time.

A blood nose, brandy coughs and back pain were among the more than 40 non-urgent ambulance calls labelled as life-threatening and prioritised over other urgent cases this week, a peak union says.

Frustrated paramedics, including specialised Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance crews, have rushed with lights and sirens to multiple “priority 0 ineffective breathing” triple-zero cases since Wednesday, to find patients with non-urgent problems, the Victorian Ambulance Union reported.

Union secretary Danny Hill blamed an update to Ambulance Victoria’s triage rules and said there could be “potentially catastrophic consequences” to patients waiting on paramedics tied up with non-urgent cases.

Ambulance Victoria — who oversees the triple-zero triage rules — defended their system as evidence based and a spokeswoman said the community would expect “nothing less” than one which “errs on the side of caution”.

Mr Hill called for an urgent review and said as long as the system over-triages non-emergency cases and “generated unnecessary work” for paramedics, they “were never going to have enough for the real emergencies”.

Some of the worst ‘Priority zero’ call-outs reported to the union include a patient who had difficulty breathing when their blood nose was pinched, a coughing patient who had been told by an emergency department to go see a general practitioner; and a caller with a “sore throat and normal vital signs”.

Mr Hill said calls that typically get rated as code one include breathing stroke and heart attack patients and most car crash victims, while priority zero was for patients not breathing or in cardiac arrest.

“Ambulance Victoria will rightly divert crews away from the code ones, twos or three to go to the priority 0,” he said.

“Adding all these additional cases that don’t end up being patients in genuine life-threat takes them away from being able to respond to patients who really are in immediate life-threat.

“There always going to be potentially catastrophic consequences when crews aren’t available to get to a patient who really needs it.”

He said it was “incredibly frustrating for paramedics” who “want to be able to respond to the emergencies when they come up”.

“They’ve driven lights and sirens … to get to someone who has coughed after having a sip of brandy and that’s been dispatched to them as a priority 0 ineffective breathing patient,” he said.

An ambulance arrives at the Alfred Hospital with a genuine medical emergency. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

“In one instance they turned out to a patient who had their bags packed [for hospital].”

He said triple-zero call-takers were not to blame and were “required by the system to deem certain symptoms as the worst case scenario”.

“We’ve been putting the message out there around saving triple-zero for emergencies … and we’re still sending an ambulance to these cases when they’re not an emergency,” he said.

Mr Hill said some of the cases reported to the union this week genuinely needed help, but not a priority 0 response.

An Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman said they had a “a statewide, consistent and evidence-based call taking and dispatch system, which is used by thousands of ambulance services worldwide”.

“This is a system that errs on the side of caution and the community would expect nothing less.”

An emergency services telecommunications authority spokeswoman said all call takers “are required to ask specific questions, and the type of response, and the urgency of any emergency medical response to each triple zero call is determined by Ambulance Victoria’s protocols”.

“Triple Zero (000) is a vital emergency service and should only be used when someone needs urgent medical assistance, their life or property is threatened, or they have just witnessed a serious accident or crime,” she said.

“Our Triple Zero operators provide our Victorian community with the urgent response needed in their emergency.”

Originally published as Ambulance Victoria paramedics rush to triple-zero calls, find patients with non-urgent problems like nose bleeds