Panic, fear and abuse: my day with 999 call handlers

Pressure levels in the ambulance service are at their highest level, with workers quitting, spiralling waiting times and public mental health at crisis point — so how is all of this affecting the people taking the calls? Katie Strick spends 12 hours on the frontline

THE first time AJ breaks off our conversation to take a 999 call, I assume the 29-year-old is telling me the proposed title of the book she wants to write about her three years working in a call handling centre for the London Ambulance Service (LAS). Emergency Ambulance, Is The Patient Breathing? would certainly make a good title for an Adam Kay-style memoir about the realities of the job, given the hundreds of times she and her colleagues are forced to ask the question to distressed, often rude, abusive and time-wasting members of the public each day.

By the fourth time AJ - full name Amelle Jebari spins in her chair to take a call mid-sentence, I realise this is the norm. There are no full conversations in the ambulance call centre. Only snippets. "Just had a woman who was raped last night and had... Emergency ambulance, is the patient breathing?" says Brian", a call-handler sitting across the desk from AJ.

"Did I tell you I met the baby I delivered over the phone the other day? Yeah, I was in the supermarket...," begins another colleague, Jonathan*, one of just two call handlers out of the 20 or so working that AJ recognises on today's shift ("yesterday I was going through the lockers and 80 per cent were locked by staff who left and never returned the key... the turnover is crazy here," she explains).

Later, AJ's colleagues on the incident management desk (IMD) are mid-way through telling me how the Deliveroo-driven convenience culture has made the public more trigger-happy with calling ambulances, when reports come in of a shooting near Marble Arch. They rally a team of responders only to find out that it was a hoax - another depressingly common breed of caller.