By Ken Thomas, medical negligence specialist and Welsh Lawyer of the Year at Harding Evans.

The vast majority of people would agree that ambulance crews do a wonderful job. Sadly, failures in the ambulance service sometimes make the headlines. Only this week a grieving mother claimed her unborn baby died after her husband had to drive her without medical assistance to another maternity unit as no ambulances were available. Closer to home, last year a 93 year-old Penarth widow was dropped off by an ambulance crew at the wrong house. By the time the crew realised the mistake and returned, the pensioner was found lying in the garden with two broken hips. She died shortly afterwards.

Like doctors and nurses, ambulance crews are healthcare professionals who owe a duty of care to the patients they are looking after. Their employers are therefore open to litigation if the crews are deemed to have acted negligently. Recently a London mother, Judy Barry brought a claim against the ambulance service for the delay in getting her to hospital. Mrs Barry’s daughter was left brain damaged after a collapsed umbilical cord left her starved of oxygen.

Of course, ambulance crews find themselves under increasing time pressures due to resourcing problems within the NHS. Earlier this month a study by Gwent Community Health Council suggested there was ambulance gridlock at Casualty Departments in the region. Apparently, ambulance crews are spending more and more time tied up at Gwent A & E Departments while waiting for patients to be handed over – this can clearly have a knock on effect on 999 response times.

Unfortunately there is an increasing tendency for ambulances to be called out for non-emergency situations. One English Trust has said it proposes sending trained nurses out specially instead of ambulances in certain situations. That Trust said in that region ambulance call outs had increased by 200% in the last 10 years earlier when only 1 in 5 such calls were true emergencies.

Another study a few years back looked at a large number of cases where paramedics treated people who had died from their injuries. A panel of experts looking at the cases decided that 1 in 10 of those patients could have been saved by better paramedic care.

Like all aspects of the healthcare system the important thing is that when mistakes are made (and perhaps claims therefore follow), lessons are learned.