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In Wales, ambulance call handling has taken on an innovative approach that has drawn international interest. Control room staff are often faced with challenging situations, such as an unconscious elderly cancer patient surrounded by concerned family members or a five-month-old baby who has been doused in shower gel by a sibling with autism. These calls require careful assessment to determine the true urgency and whether sending an ambulance is necessary. Spending time inside one of these control rooms reveals the complexity and care involved in managing emergency calls.
Calls are triaged into different categories based on their urgency, with purple and red being the highest priority, followed by orange for serious conditions like heart attacks and strokes, then yellow and green for less urgent cases. A unique feature of the Welsh system involves clinical navigators who operate like “Tinder clinicians”: they swipe calls left or right to decide if further expert review is needed or if the call warrants immediate ambulance dispatch. Interestingly, most calls do not result in an ambulance deployment. Instead, alternative solutions have been developed to handle cases that would not benefit from hospital visits, thus preserving crucial ambulance resources for true emergencies.
Andy Swinburn, the executive director of paramedicine at the Welsh Ambulance Service, emphasizes that ambulances should only be sent when a patient truly needs urgent transportation. Managing some “yellow” category patients within the community avoids unnecessary hospital journeys, freeing up ambulances for critical incidents such as strokes and heart attacks. The Service now incorporates a range of approaches, including remote assessments, video consultations, advanced paramedics who can treat patients onsite, and even volunteers. This multi-faceted strategy not only eases pressures on ambulance crews but also benefits the whole NHS and improves patient outcomes.
Among the staff, call-takers like Abbie Williams have experienced a sharp increase in call volume since 2019, now moving quickly from one emergency to the next with
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