1 in 10 ambulance call outs down to alcohol in NE England

In a 1-year period, over 31,000 ambulance call outs were alcohol related in North East England, around 10 per cent of the total, and at a cost of millions to the public purse. These are the findings of a study carried out by a research team in Newcastle and published in the Journal Alcohol and Alcoholism*.

The researchers calculated that the cost of this ambulance work and the associated A&E attendances was over £9 million. If extrapolated to the whole country, the cost could be as much as £152 million per year.

It was found that, while alcohol related call-outs were most frequent in the 20–29 age group, around half of the alcohol related attendances occurred in individuals aged 30–59. The researchers suggest that this shows that alcohol related acute harm is not merely a feature of youth but is also relatively common in middle aged drinkers.

Unsurprisingly, street call outs were significantly more likely to happen on Fridays and Saturdays from 4 pm to midnight.

Violence

The data indicated that alcohol related ambulance call outs were three times more likely to involve verbal or physical abuse of staff compared with general ambulance work.

Other evidence shows that there are around 33 assaults per 1000 staff among ambulance staff nationally, compared with 14 per 1000 within Primary Care. Furthermore, A&E nurses are more than twice as likely as other frontline NHS staff (including doctors, ward nurses and receptionists) to experience verbal or physical abuse (78% compared with the UK average of 7%), with the main reason for the abuse given as the patient being under the influence of alcohol.

Underestimate

However striking their findings may be, the authors, nonetheless, caution that their findings may underestimate the full impact of alcohol related work in this area of emergency care. Firstly, paramedics are likely to focus on patients’ presenting symptoms and may not be able to assess less overt cases of alcohol related problems. These could include situations where they are dealing with victims of alcohol related physical or sexual violence, where the patient may not have been drinking. Also, patients with a flare-up of a chronic problem linked to drinking behaviour may not be detected. There is also the fact that many patients present themselves directly to A&E or are brought by family and friends rather than via ambulance.

*A Retrospective Analysis of the Nature, Extent and Cost of Alcohol-Related Emergency Calls to the Ambulance Service in an English Region : Martin, N; Newbury-Birch, D; Duckett, J; Mason, H; Shen, J; Shevills, C; Kaner, E; 2012. Alcohol and Alcoholism, 2012, 47(2): 191-197