Ambulance sent 700km off course

We get sent on calls a few times a month that end up being in the US or another province. Usually from a cell phone with bad reception and they lose the call. They will send a truck to the 2-4 places it could be while contacting the 911 system in surrounding provinces and Maine as well.
 
Veneficus said:
Good thing you guys live on small islands :)
Click to expand...

lol..........and yet they still get it wrong!!!
It does take a good two days and a ferry ride to travel the length of them.

I would be interested to know a few of the errors made by other dispatchers?

When I was on the ambulance, it was more the details of the patients that were incorrect...like we were to attend a 50 year old and it turned out to be a 5 year old..sort of errors!
 
Every time I see NZ in the news, I just want to go back!
 
Headline is kind of misleading...I've heard all of these great stories about NZ's service and was sitting here questioning how in the world someone could drive 700km in the wrong direction without noticing
 
MediMike said:
Headline is kind of misleading...I've heard all of these great stories about NZ's service and was sitting here questioning how in the world someone could drive 700km in the wrong direction without noticing
Click to expand...

I agree with you there. The reporter could have worded it alot better than they did.
I'd be seriously worried if an ambulance crew did not question a dispatcher that tried to send them on a 700km (435 mile) callout..lol
The response time would be terrible.:rofl:
 
Dispatching is a very imperfect activity filled with a ton of pitfalls...
That's why a CAD system should have common places in them, and dispatchers should be aware of potential conflicts. The person calling assumes we know everything down to the millimeter of their location. I can rarely get much better than a block radius on a cellphone call.
Thankfully, everything turned out ok, but still very unacceptable. We similar sorts of situations here. People in our county were not inventive when naming streets. So, we looking at our mapping program and clarify the town with the caller. Even worse, we have a street in another county across the Chesapeake Bay that has the exact same name and address range as one in our county. Thanks to lack of cell tower coverage we get calls for there about once a month.
The reality is this can happen anywhere, but can be prevented.
 
I once did a transport so far into the boonies that my phone GPS was so lost, it told me to drive through an area with no roads, and to "kayak" across the Pacific ocean, at which point the street names turned into Kanji.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top