‘You called an ambulance for a blocked nose?’: Inside the life of a paramedic

Selfish people on dodgy pension cards call for an ambulance when they don’t really need one, simply because it’s free. A paramedic reveals what a typical shift really looks like.

How do so many people, who live privileged lives on the surface, make it appear to the government that they require financial assistance? A paramedic reveals all.

‘A blocked nose? You called an ambulance for a blocked nose!”

It’s my first night as a paramedic trainee and, as I am soon to learn, around 90 per cent of our “emergency call-outs” will in fact be deemed non-emergencies. Many patients never want to go to hospital in the first place. Others think by calling an ambulance they’ll get a first-class, luxury ride to hospital where, upon arrival, a red carpet will be rolled out and a team of world-class doctors will be waiting to treat them, and only them, and that there couldn’t possibly be anyone else in the emergency department with a more serious and acute health issue than theirs.

How disappointed most are when we explain the reality: “No, sir, you won’t be seen straight away for the pain you’ve had in your lower back for the past six months. Yes, sir, you will probably go to the waiting room with about 50 other people and be at the bottom of the list.”

And yet it never deters them. Day in, day out, night shift after brutal night shift, citizens continue to call 000 for non-acute, non-emergency issues. There are a couple of simple reasons this happens. The first is because you will be sent an ambulance for absolutely anything. Can’t sleep? Check. Sore toe? Of course. Toothache? Sounds innocent enough, but it could actually be a stroke, so we’ll come with lights and sirens because if the call-taker’s flow chart gets it wrong, the potential for litigation is high.

The second reason relates to a certain special card. If you are the proud owner of the light-blue, rectangular piece of paramedic krypt­onite that is an Australian Government Department of Human Services Concession Card, aka the “pension card” then your emergency service is 100 per cent free. A service that would usually cost around $500, and thus deter the ordinary tax-paying citizen from ringing 000 for something trivial, can be used — and abused — with zero consequences.

But, I hear you ask, how do so many people, who live privileged lives on the surface, make it appear to the government that they require financial assistance? There are, in fact, many ways to do this. Perhaps you officially work in “construction” but only accept payment in the form of cash. Or you’ve got a family connection to a GP who has diagnosed that your asthma, anxiety or pain from a car accident 15 years ago means you could never possibly be a productive member of the workforce ever again. Four family members will have to be your carers, so sign them up for the pension card, too. Maybe you’re a single parent, despite the fact you and your husband still live together under the same roof in a perfectly harmonious relationship raising your children together. The government doesn’t need to know, though, so long as you have a different surname from your partner then all is kosher (note: these aren’t genuine pensioners I’m having a go at — they don’t bother us).

Tim Booth could not believe the minor health problems he had to treat while working as an ambulance paramedic. He began to suspect that many of the patients were abusing the service because they could get it for free.

Back to my first night on the job: my more experienced colleague, Phil, guides me through certain fundamentals of being a paramedic that can’t be learned from a textbook. His tranquil demeanour leaves me in awe. We splint broken bones, and deliver morphine doses to make patients comfortable without anaesthetising them. We retrieve trapped patients from mangled T-bone car prangs. We pump drugs into middle-aged blokes who’ve had heart attacks (owing to bad lifestyle choices) so that their blood vessels stay open long enough to not die on us before we get them to hospital for surgery.

Phil doesn’t come close to cracking a sweat, while I continue to nervously fumble my way through. This is no child’s Fireman Sam fantasy. There’s no sitting around drinking tea on station, shooting the shit with colleagues until an air-raid tone rings out and we all slide down a pole, scramble to our trucks and rush out to save the day. It’s far from that. Someone told me early on that you need to like “old people” to do this job, and they certainly make up a large percentage of our clientele, but no one mentioned how often young and middle-aged people confuse the idea of a sudden emergency with a minor annoyance.

The man with the blocked nose begins to emerge as the rule, not the exception. People with minor chest and urinary tract infections complain to us that their ­antibiotics haven’t fixed the problem — one tablet into a seven-day course of three tablets a day. Those with chronic back issues want a sudden silver bullet from us to rid them of the pain for good; they’re not interested in going to a physio to solve the underlying issue. Modern society is used to having everything on demand (streaming services give instant access to every film and television show ever made, Uber Eats drops any cuisine at your front door in half an hour).

You Called An Ambulance For What? is a new book by a frustrated paramedic, Tim Booth.

We’re supposed to be non-judgemental, but some com­plaints are so pathetic I find myself unloading my anger on Phil — who just absorbs it with his years of ambulance acumen. He’s resigned himself to the fact that there’s ­nothing that can be done from our end. As soon as someone mentions a word on the phone that sounds like it might be mildly serious, they get sent an ambulance and it’s up to us to work out what they really need. A mild case of haemorrhoids becomes serious bleeding. Tingling fingers from anxiety become a stroke. Someone who mentions they have asthma is always having a severe asthma attack — when they just want their blood pressure checked for free, because everyone produces a pension card that waives their bill — which is the only thing that would deter timewasters.

The weeks of my first roster continue to be eaten up by people’s minor inconveniences, and my frustrations continue to fester: partly due to the training opportunities I’m missing out on, partly from the existential crisis that has me questioning whether this is a sustainable career. But mostly because I’m mad that when we’re stuck with someone who’s been constipated for a few days and hasn’t done anything to help themselves, while a genuine case — a drowning child, for example — might be just down the road. And there’s nothing we can do for them. Protocols prevent us from just abandoning the patient we’re with for a potentially more serious one without completing a full assessment and proper documentation. And that takes time. Instead, another ambulance that’s much further away will have to be assigned. And by the time they reach the kid whose lungs are full of water, it will be too late. This is the reason paramedics are sometimes grumpy.

This is an edited extract from You Called An Ambulance For What? (Macmillan Australia) by Tim Booth, $36.99, out now.