Category C Ambulance service users survey 2008

The survey was carried out in all 11 NHS ambulance trusts in England. Almost 4,000 people who received a Category C response from the ambulance services in July 2008 responded to the survey, a response rate of 45%.

The results from the survey can be used by ambulance trusts to understand the experiences of their patients and help improve their performance. The Care Quality Commission will also use the results from each trust in its assessment of NHS performance.

Results for England

Key findings

The results show that most of the people who responded to the survey had a positive experience of the way they were looked after by the emergency ambulance services.

Most people (82%) said their care and treatment were ‘definitely' explained in a way they could fully understand, while 15% felt it was done ‘to some extent'.
Almost all (98%) the respondents were attended ‘at the scene' by the ambulance service. Although there is no target waiting time for Category C cases, of those who responded to the survey, just 4% felt that help should have arrived ‘a lot sooner' and 8% said it could have been ‘a bit sooner'.
Survey respondents had a high level of trust and confidence in ambulance staff who attended them at the scene (which in 81% of cases was their own home). Ninety-one per cent of respondents ‘definitely' had trust and confidence in staff and 90% were ‘definitely' reassured by them.
Nearly a quarter of the survey respondents (23%) were not taken to hospital by ambulance. Of these, 95% agreed with the decision. Just over half (53%) of those not taken to hospital were referred to another organisation or another part of the NHS, such as their GP, a nurse, the local accident and emergency department or NHS Direct.
Of those respondents who were experiencing pain at the time, 75% felt the ambulance staff had done everything they could to control their pain, while 19% said they had ‘to some extent', and 6% believed they had not done everything they could.
Of the survey respondents who said their call was passed on to a telephone adviser, 55% rated the quality of advice they were given over the phone as ‘excellent', 33% as ‘very good', 9% as ‘good' and 2% as ‘fair'. One per cent said it was ‘poor' or ‘very poor'.

Find out more about the results for England in our highlighting key issues.

Briefing note highlighting key issues (PDF, 56KB, opens in new window)

Full 2008 results for England

Tables showing the national percentage results from the survey are also available in the document:

Full 2008 results tables (PDF, 183KB, opens in new window)

Results for NHS Ambulance trusts

Feedback reports for NHS trusts

We provided each trust with a summary report on its scores in the survey, so that the trust can compare its performance against that of other trusts and identify any areas for improvement. To ensure fairer comparisons across the results from all trusts, survey data are standardised by age and gender. We do this because we know that the views of a respondent can reflect not only their experience of NHS services, but can also relate to certain demographic characteristics, such as their age and sex. Further information is provided in each report.

A guide to understanding and interpreting these reports is available here:

Guide to benchmark reports (PDF, 59KB, opens in new window)

Local trust reports for this survey

Questionnaire

Questionnaire for the 2008 Category C service user survey (PDF, 93KB, opens in new window)

This shows the scoring assigned to each question.