No way could I have remained calm in the face of that mate. Calling an ambulance for indigestion? FFS. When I read about these people that call ambulances for things I seem to experience every day (I have Gastroesophageal Reflux, IBS, a knackered thyroid and a whole raft of other irritating problems), it makes ME incredibly jealous! And quite angry. I'd never call an ambulance. I rarely even go to the doctors unless I absolutely have to.
Some people seem to have never experienced pain. Bastards. Incredibly unfair. I don't know how you refrain from slapping them.

I suppose it's because I've gotten over getting angry at people for being a bit dim.

Some people just don't know about anything medical, they read about young people dying of heart attacks in the newspapers and they get panicked.

To be fair this job did call NHS Direct first, which is the right thing to do - it';s just that NHS Direct are (in my opinion) idiots...

And yes - some people don't understand what pain is.

Do the NHSDirect nurses not read the signs on the back of ambulances that read "This is not a TAXI, do not ABUSE it"

What a tool to advise someone to call NHS Direct for indigestion. Surely the correct response would be to tell the patient to go to a 24 hour pharmacy for some indigestion chalk?

Your flats that they're knocking down... don't suppose it's one of the three blocks very close to St Andrews in Bow, is it? In which case, good riddance to them if they're all like the flat I stayed in there for a month!

Hope you get somewhere fab through.

Chris

I may be mistaken but isn't angina often mistaken for bad indigestion by the sufferer ? Maybe NHSDirect were playing it safe ?

There's two aspects relating to NHS Direct relevant to this.

First, it can be very difficult to tell whether someone is suffering from bad indigestion when they're sat infront of you in (well, for a baby medic at least) let alone at the other end of the phone. The other is that the computer system used by NHS Direct and the WICs was based on a program designed by an american insurance company, hense it's *very* risk adverse - it's designed to 'over-diagnose' rather than risk 'under-diagnosing' (imagine what would happen if this chap was really having and MI and the computer told him to take a PPI?).