It was fairly early one day when a young man about 40 years of age called in to the 112 emergency line and asked for an ambulance. The reason was chest pains. He was very calm and "showed" no signs through the phone that he was in pain or any kind of distress. So I asked him if the patient was himself or if he had someone with him that he was calling for. He replied that he was indeed the patient, and when asked about the chest pain, he said that he had had some discomfort since late the night before and then again that morning. He had no history of any kind of heart or lung problems and...

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This case study is based on a call handled at the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, Victoria. The Authority handles 42,000 emergency ambulance calls per month in an area of 237,629 km2, with a population of 6 million. The third party caller was the mother of a patient who was in labor with her first baby and had an undiagnosed true footling breech presentation. The patient was at home alone in an isolated rural area. This breech case was the call taker's first in six years of ambulance calltaking. He had taken many childbirths calls over the years, but this one was special...

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