What do you think of the ambulance dispatch system plan?
The aim of the proposed dispatch system, to provide a quicker response for critical patients by giving them priority over less urgent cases, sounds good. But I doubt it can raise the quality of the rescue services ('Staff raise fears over new ambulance system', July 4).
The dispatch operators do not have paramedic knowledge or frontline rescue experience even if they have had 40 hours of training.
I do not believe the operators can understand patients' situations without paramedic knowledge and make accurate decisions when it comes to categorising calls. For example, an elderly person may only tell the operator that he has stomach pain. However, that pain may be related to a serious disease.
Such a case should be treated as a priority, that is, Response 1. However, an operator without any paramedic knowledge may simply regard the case as Response 3, 'non-acute'. This elderly person would then be at risk.
Although there will be a computerised dispatching system with software to help operators decide how to categorise calls, the decisions the operators make will not necessarily be accurate, as they will be based on a few simple questions.
The way to improve the quality of rescue services is not by setting a new medical-priority dispatch system but by buying new ambulances to replace the old vehicles, which break down, and employing more operators to field the increasing number of emergency calls.