A radio advertising campaign is starting this week in New South Wales to educate people not to call an ambulance for such crises as:

• broken fingernails
• dropped pillows
• pizza cravings

The State Government and the Ambulance Service of NSW want to stop people who abuse triple-0 by feigning a medical emergency to get some domestic help. Paramedics are reporting increasing instances of callers faking symptoms so they can be taken by ambulance to hospital, only to skip off to the nearest shopping centre after enjoying a free ride. More people are trying to use the service when they have minor ailments, hoping that by arriving at hospital by ambulance they will receive faster treatment.

About 22,000 out of a million calls each year are for non-emergencies.  One caller requested an ambulance because he was too tired to pick up a pillow that had fallen from his bed. Another wanted help from officers because he couldn’t get to sleep. A broken fingernail prompted another emergency call.

I reckon this campaign is just a waste of time and money. Clearly those people abusing ambulance services for trivial reasons are either too stupid, or just don’t give a rat’s arse about wasting the time and resources of emergency services, so any attempt to either educate them or appeal to their sense of community or common sense is going to sail right over their heads.

More effective would be slugging these idiots for $1,000 bill for wasting the ambulance’s time.  Expensive pizza/fingernail, whatever …. might sink into their thick skulls.

Even more effective, maybe if they call and don’t have a medical crisis, they get given one.  Break their leg, beat them around the head with a bit of 4 x 2, that sort of thing.