You Called an Ambulance for What? (Tim Booth, Macmillan)

In You Called an Ambulance for What?, former Top Gear Australia journalist Tim Booth has penned a series of entertaining stories depicting the craziness and drama of his six years as a paramedic in south-west Sydney. But the light-hearted title belies the seriousness of Booth’s motives. There’s plenty of blood, guts and other disgusting effusions, as well as some amusing bodily misadventures, all vividly depicted. Still, the actual takeaway from most of these stories, cases that Booth describes as ‘the real bread and butter’ of the job­, is what is shocking: more than 90 per cent of ambulance call-outs in Australia are deemed non-emergencies. This means that these hugely valuable, high-tech emergency vehicles, along with their highly trained, hardworking, often exhausted personnel, are called out repeatedly for the most trivial of circumstances: blocked noses, feigned fits, lower back pain, men who want free drugs to cope with their marriage breakdowns, people who are simply trying to get priority into Emergency. These stories of human frailty and stupidity are enlightening about the paramedic’s actual job but are also a call to arms about the real health of our society. The funny stories in You Called an Ambulance for What? are deadly serious and deserve to be widely read.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Julia Taylor worked in trade publishing for many years. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

Category: Reviews