When the last chairman of the London Ambulance Service left earlier this year he gave an exit interview in our internal newsletter, he said, "We are not an emergency service any more, we are a problem solving service".

Which is kind of the root of our problem.

For my last four night shifts I'd spent my time going to people who really didn't need an ambulance. They fell into one (or more) of a number of categories.

The 'I want treatment now'.

This group of people really have no idea what an ambulance is for - they've had a pain in your arm for four days, haven't taken any painkillers, haven't seen a GP and now at 3am in the morning decide that now is the perfect time to pick up a phone and dial 999.

Explaining to these people that this is not what the ambulance service is for will only result in them whining "but it really huuuurts". Which means a trip to the hospital if I want to keep my job. Explaining that if they'd made an appointment to see their GP they'd be better by now rather than sitting in A&E for four hours also falls on deaf ears.

The 'I want my problem solved'.

I was sent, under blue lights, to a woman who wanted a cup of tea.

'Patient wants cup of tea' written as large as life on my computer terminal. Which in my mind doesn't really make her a 'patient'.

Sure enough, nothing wrong with her - but her carer was running ten minutes late and she wanted her cup of tea right then and there. I found myself standing there in the kitchen watching her make it herself.

The 'I can't hold my drink'.

Drink, drink, drink, drink. Fall over, fall asleep, wake up. become abusive. The police aren't interested, to be honest neither am I, but I can't leave someone laying on the pavement in case they get mugged and it'll all be my fault, not the fault of the person who drank so much they couldn't walk.

Lather, rinse, repeat for the majority of the night.

The 'Worried well'.

Your baby cried? Your child vomited once after taking it's milk? You choked on a glass of water? People who have nothing wrong with them - well, just dial 999 for an ambulance and you too can have someone sit there and say, "There, there, it'll all be alright".

Then we'll take you to hospital because you want to go to 'get checked out'.

The 'Mad'

Not the people with a genuine mental illness - after all they are genuine patients. No, I'm talking about the people who have an argument and then have a hissy fit - roll around the floor, pretend to be unconscious, pretend to fit.

In toddlers, having a temper tantrum is to be expected. In adults it apparently needs a 999 emergency ambulance.

The 'Bad'

So, you've been run over by a stolen car - driven by your underage cousin who has since driven off and has torched the car. You then sit in the back of the ambulance with your minor leg injury whinging that 'the hospital will make me wait for ages'. Then when the triage nurse sits you out in the waiting room you throw a strop and say you are going to walk home.

Then when I show you the way out, you get angry at me for helping you out.

Yeah - screw you too buster.

The 'Sad'

Those who have, through bad life choices, ended up unable to look after themselves - the alcoholics, the lonely, the drug addicts. Of all the groups these are those that I have most sympathy for and have less problem being sent to, they phone us up for a chat, they call us for the long running illnesses that they have. The only number they know is 999 during those lonely hours of the morning. We turn up, we take them to hospital, they sit in the waiting room to talk to a psychiatrist - then they leave and do it all again tomorrow.

The 'Complete and utter misunderstanding of what an ambulance does'.

No, we will not deliver condoms to you. Even if you do want to 'shag that bitch but don't want to catch a disease'.

'Innit'.

We do not prescribe painkillers. Nor are we (despite the best attempts of our managers) an out of hours, to your doorstep, immediate GP service. Call us if you want to go to hospital, not if you want to stay at home with tablets for your self diagnosed 'swine flu'.

We do not fix stairlifts, beds, sinks or windows.

If you go into hospital via an ambulance you will not get seen quicker.

Let me repeat that.

If you go into hospital via an ambulance you will not get seen quicker.

Each of these people have picked up the phone, dialled 999 and when asked what emergency service they require have asked for an ambulance. What they should do is ask for the fire service - they have more plumbers working for them and they are a lot less busy than us.

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I don't hate these people, well, maybe 'The Bad', but at the end of the day the reason why we can't get to that heart attack in time, the reason why your gran lays on the floor for hours with a broken hip is because we are spending more and more of our time chasing after people who think that '999' is the only number that can solve their problems.

As our ex-chairman says, we are no longer an 'emergency' service, much like the police who are called to deal with couples arguing over control of the TV remote, we are being used more and more as someone to whom responsibility is handed.

'Look after me', they say - forgetting that they are adults who should have some idea of how to keep their body and mind working in some sort of reasonable fashion without needing an emergency response.

Education, of course is the answer, my solution would be to remove 'Hole in the wall' from the TV schedules and replace it with an hour of 'How to look after yourself'. Then make every TV channel have to show it at the same time so that there is no getting away from it.

Meanwhile I'm off to scrape the word 'Emergency' from all our ambulances.

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For those that worry that I'm on the verge of burning out - I'm not. When I was nursing I got burnt out, and I can recognise the signs.

If you have ever done a health and safety course of fires, you'll probably know about the 'triangle of fire', where the three sides of the triangle are made up by 'heat', 'fuel' and 'oxygen'.

At the moment I have the 'triangle of whinging', it's three sides made up by 'Seasonal Affective Depression', 'Too many nightshifts with a stinking cold', and 'going far too long without meeting anyone who actually needs an emergency ambulance'.

While I normally feel crappy around this time of year there has been an unusually long stretch of time since I last went to a 'worthwhile' job. One where the pulse quickens a little and you actually have to think. Think, as opposed to ask them to walk onto the ambulance and then fill in some paperwork before leading them off the ambulance at the other end.

(As an example - we were sent to a 'stabbing'. He'd been punched and had a scrape to his buttock...)