BLEEDING from the mouth and ears, her husband lay in the toilet after a bad fall. His pulse was growing fainter by the minute, his breathing erratic and weak.

Desperate, she called the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).

Calmly, the emergency operator guided her through the steps for cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

And she did enough to keep him alive till the paramedics arrived to stabilise him.

Staff sergeant (SSG) Ismail Md Wahid (right), 30, remembers that day last year when he was on duty in the SCDF call centre.

SSG Ismail, a supervisor at the centre, took the call from the woman from a landed property in Changi.

What he did - guiding the victim's caregiver - that day is similar to the SCDF's new system called the medical protocol system, where operators will ask callers some questions on the state of the casualty or patient after the ambulance has been sent.

This is so that responding ambulance crews will be able to better prepare themselves to treat him when they arrived.

Medical protocol system

SCDF said that currently, once the caller's name, location and reason for calling are taken down, the ambulance will be sent. Ambulances try to arrive within 11 minutes and emergency calls are free.

The centre receives more than 300 calls for ambulance services every day.

Yesterday, the SCDF announced that from 15 Apr, SCDF operators will ask callers questions like what caused the injury, medical history and whether the patient is conscious or not.

From today till 14 Apr, the SCDF will be testing out the system.

When SSG Ismail got the call, he said the woman was hysterical and was distressed.

From what she had described, he suspected her husband could also have been bleeding internally.

He needed her to help him while waiting for the ambulance crew that was rushing to the scene.

But first, she had to gather herself.

He said: 'I told her to calm down and asked what had happened.

'She said her husband was not breathing but had a pulse. I felt there was some hope and advised her on how to do CPR.'

Despite the panicky woman being reluctant initially, she eventually followed SSG Ismail's instructions.

She applied CPR until the ambulance crew arrived and took the man to hospital.

Later, SSG Ismail called the paramedic who tended to the man and found out that he had made it to the hospital alive.

He said: 'When this works out, it makes you feel shiok (Singlish for fantastic).

'There's job satisfaction and we know that what we do is worth it.'

The SCDF also announced yesterday the names of the two private ambulance operators that would be complementing SCDF's emergency ambulance service.

Unistrong Technology at Ubi Avenue 1 and Lentor Ambulance at Lentor Avenue will each provide five ambulances and 15 crew to respond to emergency calls to SCDF from 1 Jun.

They will be under the SCDF's command and will be deployed at some of the 15 fire stations and 26 fire posts.

Details will be finalised later.

The operators' contracts will end in May 2012 and may be extended by another two years.

No difference in standards

SCDF had earlier said there were too many emergency calls to respond to and it was taking its toll on their 40 ambulances.

There were a total of 117,896 calls last year, almost double the 60,000 calls in 1995.

Colonel Anwar Abdullah, 44, director (operations department) stressed that the crew from these operators would be as well-trained as SCDF personnel and their ambulances would have the same types of equipment as the SCDF's.

These include defibrilators and oxygen resuscitators.

The SCDF also has an audit system to monitor the performance of the operators.

SCDF's chief medical officer, Lieutenant Colonel (Dr) Chiam Tut Fu, 42, said there would be no differentiation between a private or a SCDF ambulance when responding to an emergency.

He said: 'Whoever is available first, will respond.'

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This story was first published in The New Paper.