Sat-nav ambulance goes on 400-mile detour
An ambulance crew who relied on a satellite navigation device while transferring a patient 12 miles across Essex realised something was wrong only when they reached Manchester four hours later.
London Ambulance Service was at a loss yesterday to explain why the crew had not noticed their journey was taking somewhat longer than expected or how they had managed to miss subtle indicators that it was going awry — such as Birmingham.
Their 400-mile odyssey began in the early hours of Tuesday when they were called to take a patient from King George's Hospital in Ilford to Mascalls Park Hospital in Brentwood.
According to the AA route planner, that should have taken them 20 minutes.
The ambulance finally arrived at Mascalls Park eight hours later after ploughing up and down the motorway.
A spokesman for the service said the sat-nav device had an incorrect database which placed Mascalls Park in the Manchester area.
He failed to explain why the driver and his colleague had not suspected something might be wrong.
"We believe that the crew, who had not been to this particular hospital before, followed the directions given by the navigation system, without manually confirming their destination," he said.
"We understand that they reached the outskirts of Manchester before realising they were heading to the wrong destination."
Easily done.
And the patient? "The patient was comfortable throughout. He slept through the journey and arrived safely in the afternoon."
The spokesman added: "The problem with the navigation database is now being fixed."
He did not know whether the crew were to face a reprimand.
Taken from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=AWKETPMXQUHCRQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/12/02/nsatnav02.xml
Although Health Direct can not condone the waste of resources in the ambulance and it's crew trundling up the M25, M1 and M6 and back down again, it raises the question in a rather comical fashion of whether skilled NHS staff are now so blinded to using their own common sense having become used to the avalanche of centralist orders and targets from Downing Street.
London Ambulance Service was at a loss yesterday to explain why the crew had not noticed their journey was taking somewhat longer than expected or how they had managed to miss subtle indicators that it was going awry — such as Birmingham.
Their 400-mile odyssey began in the early hours of Tuesday when they were called to take a patient from King George's Hospital in Ilford to Mascalls Park Hospital in Brentwood.
According to the AA route planner, that should have taken them 20 minutes.
The ambulance finally arrived at Mascalls Park eight hours later after ploughing up and down the motorway.
A spokesman for the service said the sat-nav device had an incorrect database which placed Mascalls Park in the Manchester area.
He failed to explain why the driver and his colleague had not suspected something might be wrong.
"We believe that the crew, who had not been to this particular hospital before, followed the directions given by the navigation system, without manually confirming their destination," he said.
"We understand that they reached the outskirts of Manchester before realising they were heading to the wrong destination."
Easily done.
And the patient? "The patient was comfortable throughout. He slept through the journey and arrived safely in the afternoon."
The spokesman added: "The problem with the navigation database is now being fixed."
He did not know whether the crew were to face a reprimand.
Taken from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=AWKETPMXQUHCRQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/12/02/nsatnav02.xml
Although Health Direct can not condone the waste of resources in the ambulance and it's crew trundling up the M25, M1 and M6 and back down again, it raises the question in a rather comical fashion of whether skilled NHS staff are now so blinded to using their own common sense having become used to the avalanche of centralist orders and targets from Downing Street.
posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic at
9:21 AM
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