London Ambulance Service

Very important that staff are not overworked, well trained, well paid. Accident and emergency services easy and fast to reach, therefore better founding for the NHS so that when an emergency occurs it can be seen quickly. Well trained answering staff who can recognise real emergency and not waste the service for non emergencies who can go to a GP. Better access to GP practice, it takes weeks to obtain an appointment. 

I agree regarding better management and better terms and conditions for staff.  The biggest issue is gridlocked traffic.  I live near a busy road and close to a traffic light, the noise of emergency vehicles trying to get past traffic is deafening.  The noise polution and damage to others is a serious problem, and I suspect impossible to solve.  Unless there is a dedicated lane for buses and energency vehicles.

I have used the service in Havering a few times and found the service exceptional .Always a quick reponse a smile put the patient a ease.

Simply put, they are over-stretched. We had someone who broke their arm (compound fracture) in a playing field--waited 4 hours for an ambulance because we kept getting bumped down the queue for higher priority ones. I fully understand that someone with a cardiac arrest or a knife wound needs much more urgent care, but we should have enough resources to be able to provide care to everyone in under 4h on a Sunday afternoon.

The other week, I found out that the Air Ambulance is a charity...are you kidding me?! We're in the middle of central London in 2018 and the air ambulance is a charity like its something run by nuns from the 1400s?! This is something that should be a critical government service. I want the air ambulance to have the same respect, funding, and support as the best brain surgeon at UCLH or the best cancer research doctor at the Royal Marsden...it's a critical service!

The main things I would expect are for calls to be answered quickly, for advice on the phone to be useful, for ambulance crews to arrive quickly (where necessary and where possible!) and for staff to be well trained and friendly but also happy in their jobs so that they don't gain lots of experience and then leave the service because they're exhausted or frustrated.

Outstanding emergency service providing quality, informed first point of contact treatment and care in a reassuring, professional manner.  Their primary role is patient care in vulnerable situations and providing expert medical intervention at the first location and on the way to A & E.   A consistent success.

In the era of modern audio and visual contact, rationalisation is required on the handover process from ambulance staff to A & E staff to avoid or minimise the absurd situation of ambulance staff sitting in A & E departments waiting to provide an oral report on their contact with the patient.  

Second, an emergency ambulance service will always be required and joining up with other blue light services is not new but isn't progressing at sufficient speed in the UK.  This joining up should also included an integrated approach to health with social care and stop patients being ferried by LAS to A & E depts when the real issue is social care and requiring more sustainable solutions than can be provided by A & E.    

LAS should have powers to divert patients or require other professionals to intervene when A & E dept is not the optimum solution.   Appreciate demarcation issues and additional training costs but the saving to A & Es, upskilling of LAS, and integrated health and social care  would bring both substantial benefits to the patient and substantial savings to the NHS.

What Londoners want from the Ambulance Service?

1) To get to us fast. This is a huge problem in south London where traffic is terrible.

2) Smart paramedics who can make the RIGHT decision FAST and know more than 'first aid'. They should be almost the clever as an A & E doctor. Standards need to be raised and so does pay.

3) Ambulances should carry better life saving equipment and the staff should know how to use it.

In the last couple of years when I have had to phone an ambulance, I have received an excellent service, especially the Paramedics who are so professional and arrived super quickly.

However I have heard stories of people waiting a long time for ambulances which I think shows how overstretched they are. I think more should be recruited and trained. I think they should be paid well and improve working conditions.

I think anyone who assaults an NHS worker and especially front line workers should be punished.

Funding to run an efficient Ambulance service which responds to all emergency calls and deals with the most serious cases in priority.  Enough funding for the Mental Health services to ensure that those with mental health issues who make unneccesary calls to the Service clogging up the system so that the real emergencies are delayed, don't run the system into the ground. Powers for action to be taken against time wasters without diagnosed mental health issues who just think this is fun and can't be bothered to find out the right information but just call 999!   I am immensely proud of my paramedic Goddaughter who works all the hours sent for very little salary.  She trained hard with a degree and is a credit to the NHS - but she is not paid a living wage.  Cut out some of the hospital managers who duplicate jobs (see Enfield/Barnet Royal Free Trust) who still manage teams which lose notes, duplicate or miss appointments and get some efficient staff doing these jobs - not 'jobs for the boys' or family members!!!  These are costing the NHS a fortune in financial terms and goodwill in reputation!

The London Ambulance is an emergency service, therefore I would hope that the service is fast, staffed by experts in providing emergency, life saving care. However, more often then not you hear stories of Ambulances taking over 10 minutes to arrive or being used as a transportation service rather than an emergency care service.

Is there  London BHS ambulance service? I thought it had been privatised. Hence the cuts and consequent huge pressures on them. Bring it back under public ownership and fund it properly

No abulance services should be contracted out to failing corporations like G4S (remember the olympics security fiasco?) as they are here in Wandsworth.  

Primary care needs improvement to reduce excessive demand.  On the day our council reduced the number of home care visits for the elderly emergency calls shot up as elderly folk with mobility or memory issues attempted to get into baths, prepare meals, change bed linen etc.  without the assistance they needed.

More work is needed on public education around appropriate use of abulance services.  Public education has transformed the drink driving culture from ''one for the road?" to " do you want another or are you driving?"  Surely we can acheive similar to combat inappropriate emergency calls. 

And of course fair pay, better working conditions, and union support for everyone working in the service to ensure the high standards and efficiency we all expect.

apart from that, i want a speedy service, compitant unit operators, polite, and i also wish at least one unit operator were trained in more procedures, that the unit carried more drugs so perhaps more could be treated in situ and not require transfer to hospital too!

If more people stopped abusing the LAS by calling 999 for no serious reason, perhaps the LAS wouldn't be overworked and underfunded!!! Then when there is a genuine emergency wait times will be significantly reduced and more lives saved, which in turns frees up space in A&E when it is chocker block with 60% of cases that do NOT need to be there!

I would also like to chip in on the ear splitting volume of the sirens. Why do they need to be audible from miles away in London.

I live near a main road that seems to average over twenty siren runs per day. Of course not all ambulances, and to be fair their drivers do keep switching them off if little traffic.

When I am actually walking as a pedestrian my hearing aid goes bananas when one goes past and I have to cover my ears.

As others have said I understand the need for emrgency vehicle sirens and lights, but query their volume.

The number of ambulance stations needs to be increased to cut response times. Scrap targets. It puts the driver under pressure, increases the risk of accidents and injury to him/herself and occupants. If I need to call one I dont want them having an accident on the way.

My last two trips to A&E (one of which I was taken in an ambulance, the other I was at Paddington Station so they were able to wheel me in a wheelchair to St Mary's) I was vomitting severely so couldn't get a taxi but didn't require a full ambulance. I think this is probably true of a lot of people that they need to get to A&E & a taxi wouldn't take them/they don't have a car but don't need an ambulance.

If the government/London could provide something to transport all these people, effectively just a taxi that has wipeable seats etc, multiple sick buckets etc etc, then perhaps this would take a big strain off ambulances that can be used for life threatening situations? And of course saves a huge cost too.

Similarly more mental health nurses/staff provided, as well as care for the elderly to pick them up when they've fallen etc so that ambulances are used purely for life threatening cases.

Economically it makes no sense to have cut costs to all these services as it then ends up costing more sending an ambulance there. 

From my experience the staff require more training in urgent care, and the ability to speak to on call GP at night more quickly (had to wait two hours for a call back by which point I was losing consciousness).

Ultimately there is clearly a huge issue with funds and the distribution of this needs to be reconsidered somehow, and an understanding that investing elsewhere reduces the strain on ambulances.

Disagree with the suggestion below re: paying, as this goes totally against the whole concept of the NHS and risks in life threatening cases people can't pay for an ambulance. However I do think there needs to be a big ad campaign to help people understand how much it costs for an ambulance to come out and how they should only be used in a true emergency.

I think they should do a study on the effective volume of their sirens, as they're way too loud and almost certainly cause hearing damage to pedestrians. They should also be prohibited from using their sirens after 11.30pm the same as cars. If you live on a main road it's basically constant sirens and very annoying.