Operator sends neighbour, not ambulance, to help injured woman
Published: 5 Aug 11 10:43 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/35372/20110805/
Rather than send an ambulance to respond to a call from an injured woman in Borlänge in central Sweden, emergency services operator SOS Alarm elected to call on an elderly couple living nearby to check on her instead.
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Instead, the operator called an elderly couple living nearby and asked them to help the woman instead.
However, the couple were unable to find the woman's apartment and eventually returned home without helping the woman.
"The whole incident is very unfortunate. This operator has acted entirely of his own accord," said Daniel Lundin, manager of SOS in Falun, to the newspaper.
The daughter of the elderly couple who unexpectedly found themselves tasked with responding to the emergency services call was furious over SOS Alarm's actions.
"How can SOS call people late on Saturday night and call them out on duty?" she wrote in an aggrieved statement, wondering what might've happened if her parents had injured themselves trying to help the injured woman back on her feet.
"Might they have been charged with breaking and entering?"
In the end, the injured woman was helped by another neighbour, and was finally able to get back up.
Lundin explained that how to respond to the injured woman's call for help is complicated by uncertainty about how serious the situation may be.
Depending on the severity, he said, responding to such calls may instead be the responsibility of home care services rather than emergency services.
The incident is the latest in a number of cases in which SOS Alarm has come in for criticism.
Earlier in the week, a woman from Söderham in eastern Sweden who was suffering from heart disease was made to wait more than an hour for help because SOS Alarm operators sent the the ambulance to the identical address in Hudiksvall, a town 50 kilometres away from where the sick woman lived.
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"Rather than send an ambulance to respond to a call from an injured woman in Borlänge in central Sweden, emergency services operator SOS Alarm elected to call on an elderly couple living nearby to check on her instead."
This means that services operator at SOS is either stupid or mentally retarded.
With a litte bit of common sense, she should have done the following:
1.- Send the ambulance, no matter if the woman was seriously injured or not.
2.- Call the neighbours just for them to keep an eye on the woman. Just to give her support.
Many stupidities have been committed by the SOS personal, but, as usual, nothing happens in beautiful Sweden and nothing will happen.
If emergency services called me and asked me to assist a neighbour who had made an emergency call after a fall, I would do this without hesitation, and I would hope that my neighbours would do the same fo me.
I would assume that a medical professional would remain on the phone to ensure that there is no neck of back injury that I could aggravate by moving the person in the wrong way, and that they would have advised the accident victim over the phone that I was on my way, and continue speaking with the accident victim over the phone to ensure that the nature of the injuries does not require advanced medical equipment to get her back up again.
There are probably dozens of cases where elderly parents who fall are helped by their children, and no ambulance is ever called. I've never heard of any case where a parent was injured further or paralyzed for life because their son or daughter lifted them the wrong way after a fall. Asking a member of the community to volunteer to provide this service for an elderly person who is living alone is not very different from a son or daughter acting to provide initial assistance, and to me the request to assist would be an appeal to one's community spirit, and not an 'outrage'.
You are certinly an eception of the rule. I would assist too, but unfortunately, you might wind up being accused to the police that you did not do enuugh to keep her in good conditions, that you lacked experience, that you were sleepy or that you were watching tv when the woman's condition got worse.
I know you got my point.
My main point is that the article only mentions the 'outrage' of the daughter of the couple who were asked to assist.
The accident victim herself may have felt that her injuries were not serious, and she may have agreed to a suggestion by the SOS person that one of her neighbours could be called upon to provide adequate assistance. This article does not present the accident victim's point of view, so in that sense the story is not completely known to us.
Medical dictatorship? Ask Putin, who made "potatismos" of Reinfeldt back on April 27, 2011.
Go to Google, type "Vladimir Putin Dissar Reinfeldt" and have a good laugh.
Guess who the annoying reporter was.
we hear this kind of news nonstop.... fire those incompetents :S
Your response and that of some of the others is perhaps the perfect example of why SOS Alarm continues to get away with their foolishness:
1. Perhaps least important, this is what they are paid for. They hold themselves out as experts in EMERGENCY CARE, they are not hired to be a telephone reference service.
2. Because SOS is hired to provide this service, they should provide it, not ask someone else to do their work for them (without payment).
3. The service that SOS is hired to provide is emergency medical care. This is not something to be administered over the telephone.
4. Calling lay people, with no known knowledge of medicine or emergency diagnosis and care, to make potential life or death decisions is a threat to public safety. What if they call a cooperative drunk or drug addict or someone who is suffering from a mental disability, who agrees to do what they ask?
José Luis Belmar, author of Om svensk arrogans? Ah-haaa...
You have a crystal ball. Good for you. For your information, I have nine more books. Three of them had been best-sellers in my country. Thanks for your Ah-haaaaa. It sounds funny.
To get there they would have to send helicopter...
Maybe the woman wasnt so sick and maybe her neighbor happens to be a nurse...
The people in charge of the ambulance services are not "stängda i huvudet" like in Sweden, a first class country (?) where everything must be done by the book.
In the end the lady was helped to her feet and required no further medical assistance
@KungsholmenGuy
The reason that the daughter is angry is that the couple asked to go over and help were very elderly (late 70s) not young/fit people - these were NOT next door neighbours either - the elderly pair went out and 8.30-9.00pm to try and find this lady and could not find the house and became very worried
In addition the SOS operator did not tell the elderly couple that this was not an emergency - the couple became distressed as they believed that they might be letting down a woman in serious trouble
Thus the daughter is angry that her elderly parents were put at risk of injuring themselves - and I guess she has made a formal complaint about her elderly parents being put in this situation - so probably the news-story has come from the complaint (freedom of information)
So The Local's version is misleading? No kidding. I would have never guessed. It is certainly not TL style. It always has damn good headlines, leads and contents. Its collaborators will be nominated for the coming Pulitzer prizes. Are you sure in what you stated?
Not in Sweden Johnny, not in Sseden where they have to see the Book of Rules to find out if the call fits into Chapter 1 and 2. But, if the call is in between, they call someone else to go and find out if the ambulance is really needed or not.
Sweedes go by the book. That is a fact. But they go by the book for others but not for themselves. They might be crazy, but sometimes, they are not stupid; well, sometimes.
What on earth are you on about? Islands and helicopters????
According to the Swedish news reports the incident happened in Stora Tuna - an area just outside central Borlänge near the airport
Indeed Dalarna doesn't even have an ambulance helicopter - although perhaps it should for the north of the county!
Are you sure the dispatcher was a she? Not a he? And what about an in between just waiting to come today to Stockholm and watch the parade of the very proud prides?
As of next week, the she/he/it will start working again with full pay, till another call is at her/his/it/ reach.
Thanks for supplying additional information about the incident.
Agree that the SOS operator made an improper determination of this elderly couple's ability to assist (due to their age, and uncertainty about the address), and apparently supplied no indication that the situation was not an urgent one, and possibly this operator did not stay in contact with them to tell them that their assistance was no longer needed.
For the above reasons, the SOS operator can be deemed to have handled the situation in a 'clumsy' way that would have been frustrating to the couple (or anyone in their position), and I would agree further that a social services employee, if reachable at that time, would have been the best choice. Also commendations are due to the elderly couple, for making the effort that they did.
So my view now is that a far better screening mechanism should be put in place at SOS when asking neighbours to assist in situations like these, and (again) only appealing to neighbours if social services cannot be reached, or are too far away. In fairness to the SOS employee, the situation was clearly not an urgent one, and did not require an ambulance to race across town, so his/her common sense solution was not some sort of crime, and it does not imply that he/she would have handled a far more urgent situation in the same way.
As for this case it should have been Social Services who should have gone to help her. Why the SOS person didn't call them is a mystery...
@ Do people seriously believe ambulances should be sent out for every little thing? Do people not realise how much that would cost? Wo gives a SH IT how much it will cost for the love of god! When someone is scared enough to call and amulance it is not for a hangnail! We pay high taxes in this country for medical care, very high taxes. An ambulance should be dispatched every time. Get rid of some of those useless studies like " Study shows which swedish dialects are sexier" and the ever so stupid "think tanks" and put that monety into ambulances. Calling some neibours to do the medical proffessions job is absolutely ridicuolous!!!!! But, I know, I know I KNOW...."Sweden has the best medical care in the world" Bawk! bawk! Polly wants a cracker. Bawk! they say with their little brainwashed parrot voices.
I hope that you do not face a moment where you need an ambulance and it does not arrive because the dispatcher considered your case of no importance, calls someone who lives in the wilderness to go and take a look at you. In the meantime,
you might die. This is irrelevant, because, as you stated, "If someone "desperately" needs transport they simply have to order a taxi and pay for it themselves. Ambulances are there for cases deemed emergencies.".
I hope that when times come, you have enough money to pay the taxi.
But there they are just following the likes of every other organisation - government and civil - on all things that they do.
Give the Service to the Red Cross who MIGHT be able to do the job better.