911 dispatchers are trained and certified to provide concise and accurate medically reviewed instructions over the phone so that you are not just standing there waiting for the ambulance.
Disclaimer: I’m not even upset at your partial joke. I totally get your point.
With that said, back in 1995, I had to ride my bike down the road in the middle of the night to wake a cop up, because we didn’t even own a phone at the time. I was only 13 at the time.
My mom had overdosed on a full bottle of Ellivile (Amitriptyline) and was foaming at the mouth. It took me like 10 minutes to get down the road, 10 minutes to wake him up, 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, and another hour and a half for the tow truck to come get the ambulance out of the muddy ditch after they got stuck.
It’s an absolute miracle she lived at all. It would also have saved us lots of risk of losing her if I only knew of something around the house fairly safe to make her vomit the stuff up.
TL;DR - I learned you can’t count on 911 to arrive in any timely manner, especially when they don’t know how to drive a big truck over muddy roads.
I would have actually been better off asking the internet how to induce vomiting than waiting over 2 hours for an ambulance. Too bad that service wasn’t an advanced and readily available thing at the time.
That seems unnecessary. You have them on the phone and they have the ability to guide you through it. It’s not like they should have to text or email you that information. You aren’t guaranteed to have a data signal or be on a cell phone or something to receive a text or email.
The overwhelming majority of people are going to be calling from a cell phone with data access now. It’s time to consider including data access to emergency services w/ emergency roaming functionally just like we do with calls and sms. A system can and should be built out to provide emergency gps, video + information services like we described and live video calls. We have the technology we just have to cut through bureaucracy.
Providing advanced smartphone functionality in emergencies could be hugely beneficial.
911 dispatchers are trained and certified to provide concise and accurate medically reviewed instructions over the phone so that you are not just standing there waiting for the ambulance.
Kids hate talking on the phone so much they’d rather get help from YouTube than call 911.
That’s only partially a joke.
Disclaimer: I’m not even upset at your partial joke. I totally get your point.
With that said, back in 1995, I had to ride my bike down the road in the middle of the night to wake a cop up, because we didn’t even own a phone at the time. I was only 13 at the time.
My mom had overdosed on a full bottle of Ellivile (Amitriptyline) and was foaming at the mouth. It took me like 10 minutes to get down the road, 10 minutes to wake him up, 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, and another hour and a half for the tow truck to come get the ambulance out of the muddy ditch after they got stuck.
It’s an absolute miracle she lived at all. It would also have saved us lots of risk of losing her if I only knew of something around the house fairly safe to make her vomit the stuff up.
TL;DR - I learned you can’t count on 911 to arrive in any timely manner, especially when they don’t know how to drive a big truck over muddy roads.
I would have actually been better off asking the internet how to induce vomiting than waiting over 2 hours for an ambulance. Too bad that service wasn’t an advanced and readily available thing at the time.
They should also be able to rapidly provide instructional video in the year 2023
That seems unnecessary. You have them on the phone and they have the ability to guide you through it. It’s not like they should have to text or email you that information. You aren’t guaranteed to have a data signal or be on a cell phone or something to receive a text or email.
I don’t really agree at all.
The overwhelming majority of people are going to be calling from a cell phone with data access now. It’s time to consider including data access to emergency services w/ emergency roaming functionally just like we do with calls and sms. A system can and should be built out to provide emergency gps, video + information services like we described and live video calls. We have the technology we just have to cut through bureaucracy.
Providing advanced smartphone functionality in emergencies could be hugely beneficial.