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Clinical Quality and Patient Safety

Information for GPs and Clinicians

Emergency 999 Calls

You should call 999 when you or your patient requires immediate assistance from an emergency ambulance crew.

Examples include:

  • decreased level of consciousness
  • severe respiratory difficulties
  • severe trauma
  • uncontrolled bleeding
  • acute cardiac illness myocardial infarction
  • cardiac arrest

Following a 999 emergency call, patients will normally be taken to the nearest or most appropriate accident and emergency department. This decision is made by the ambulance crew.

When health professionals require an ambulance for patients who need to be admitted to a specific hospital, department or ward, please make the patient’s destination clear.

When You Call 999 for an Emergency Response

The control assistant will require or ask:

  • for a telephone number
  • for the postcode or location of incident
  • for a description of incident
  • the name, age, gender of patient
  • is the patient conscious and breathing?
  • is a doctor/trained staff on scene?
  • is there a defibrillator on scene?
  • for any other relevant information (eg medication/infectious disease/approximate weight of patient if appropriate)

When a 999 call is made, the prioritisation procedures require the emergency call to be classified as either:

  • immediately life threatening (category A)
  • serious calls which are not immediately life threatening (category B)
  • or less serious, for a patient who may still require transportation to hospital (category C)
    Note: not all category C calls will be transported to hospital

Clinically based national targets deem that 75% of all category A ‘life threatening’ calls are responded to within 8 minutes of the call.

One in four calls to the 999 service are inappropriate and that includes calls from other healthcare professionals.

 

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