Hurrah! What an informative, well thought out and incredibly well written post. I too have been reading the headlines of late regarding crew mealbreaks and it's something we dispatchers have been discussing throughout our shifts over the last few nights. Your post really hit home a major issue for me. Educating the public is something I've been hammering on about for years. I've worked for EAS for more than 5 years now and I've seen the call volume go up at an alarming rate, yet the numbers of ambulances does not match the rate of increase. It's all well and good for us to be expected to have no patients waiting, to have "cover" over all areas in preparation for the next call and to ensure that all those crews that are working get their mealbreak that, as far as EU regulations go, they are entitled to. But when the calls we are being expected to attend are as trivial as cut fingers, coughs and colds and (in one recent case) a mishap with a sex toy, is it any wonder something is falling flat? In one of the newspaper articles they talked about the number of solo responses now in use and that they were simply being used to "stop the clock". Ok, yes, in many cases they are, but with so many of our solo responses now being ECP trained, they are responding to and treating at home the crap that has no need for an emergency ambulance whatsoever. It tires me out to think about it but I always end up coming back to the same point. Education is the key. People need to realise that the ambulance service and the NHS as a whole cannot feasibly cope with trivial matters than can be dealt with by other means. Common sense seems to have gone out of the window and many ambulance staff are sure to follow if they are expected to keep up with these mounting pressures.