This guy dialed 911 ten times over a 30 hour period and then died. Everyone gets fired, this coming from a union person myself, no one deserves protection in a case like this. We dont promote or defend incompetency
This wasnt a guy who dialed 911 once and died waiting for an ambulance that was delayed 15 minutes in a snowstorm.
Devise a plan and then execute it or pack your bags. Simple.
out of curiosity, do you work in NYC, or in another concrete jungle?
Based on your statement, I can tell you have never, ever worked as a dispatcher. because I can have a guy with severe abdominal pain call me 5 times when we are backed up with shooting and stabbings and chest pains, while other higher priority calls only call once.
In fact, the last shift I worked, I received a call for a person having a seizure (in my system prioritized as a low priority call, by more educated people than I). in fact, while I was taking the call, my partner was taking the exact same call, from another person in the same house. 3 minutes after we took the call (well, both), they called back again. person was postictal, but they ambulance showed up. 2 minutes later, another call. thankfully it was a slow night, so an ambulance was sent right away, but if we were busy, the job would have held. So those 4 calls in the span on 10 minutes don't equate to the call being more life threatening than a chest pain or resp distress call, where the caller only calls once and then waits for the ambulance. There is absolutely no correlation.
Now before you jump all over me, keep this in mind: it was during a massive snow storm, there were probably dozens if not hundreds of calls holding, and the city didn't have enough units. You need to give the dispatchers some leeway, as well as the field units. and I'm sorry, but a low priority calls that just this one time turns out to be fatal is the exception, not the rule, to priority dispatching.
yes they should have found a way to make it to the scene, or even better, the sick person's family should have gotten the patient into the car and driven to the hospital (I know shocker there), esp when it became obvious that help wasn't coming after the first hour of waiting. but the caller canceled the ambulance too. As a result, they share some part of the burden (as does DPW for now plowing, the medical director, the city for not staffing enough units, the idiot director who is throwing his crews under the bus, and the crew and supervisor, who didn't use their rescues or the FD to make patient contact (although it may be because the EMS rescue and FD were tied up on other calls during this horrific storm), and of course, mother nature for sending this mother of all snow storms).
btw, I once called 911 in NYC, midtown Manhattan to be exact, for a coworker of mine who was having chest pains. we were on the 40th floor of a highrise. after 20 minutes of waiting, I called 911 again, to see what the status was of the ambulance. the dispatcher told me they came and left. apparently the original crew picked up some bum from outside and took him to the hospital, and never came to the 40th floor. another unit finally showed up (30 minutes after the initial 911 call), and took him to the hospital for eval.
should the paramedic/emt crew who was sent first be fired? they were obviously incompetent, for not even bothering to come to the floor we were on. no call back was made to confirm they had the right patient. hell, if we had been patient, and not called 911 again, an ambulance might have never shown up. using your line of thinking, the dispatcher, call taker, EMS crew, supervisor and medical director should all be fired for gross incompetence. I just want to make sure we are on the same page here.
