The three types of ambulance response

1. For immediately life threatening or time critical incidents: an ambulance will be dispatched immediately (with lights and sirens).

• Examples of immediately life threatening problems include cardiac arrest, severe shortness of breath, symptomatic myocardial ischaemia, shock (from any cause) or unconsciousness.
• Examples of time critical problems are a stroke with symptoms that are less than 3 hours since the onset (and therefore the patient is potentially a candidate for thrombolysis) and fractures (or dislocations) with distal limb ischaemia.

2. For not immediately life threatening or time critical but urgent/potentially serious incidents: we will respond immediately (at normal road speed).

• Examples of urgent/potentially serious incidents include pneumonia without severe shortness of breath, abdominal pain without shock and meningitis with a normal level of consciousness.

3. For non-urgent (not serious or immediately life threatening) incidents: we will respond as soon as possible depending on other emergencies in your area and this may take up to 2 hours. In the event of the patient having uncontrolled pain or other complications, the response will be upgraded as appropriate.

• You will be asked if this is safe for the patient, if you advise it is not - we will prioritise an earlier dispatch.
• If the patient’s condition changes in any way prior to an ambulance arriving we ask that you call us back with an update so that we can re-evaluate the ambulance response.
• Examples of non-urgent incidents include soft tissue infections without signs of septic shock, fractures without distal limb ischaemia and stroke with symptoms that have been present too long for the patient to be potentially a candidate for thrombolysis.