It's not *just* a case of covering our arse so much - it's just that GPs and Drs have just a shade more training than us ambulance folk. So we want to be careful about not missing something. (That and I think it's people who call us for things but don't want to go to hospital or wait to see their own GP who are causing the work...) And you are completely right, sometimes you don't get it right - as an example would you order a CT scan for an unsymptomatic child? Which I would suspect would be the only thing that *may* have forseen the child's sudden decline. Sometimes people just die, and while the survivors look for someone to blame, there often isn't someone.