The Ambulance Control Centre is vital to the Ambulance Service and it is the core of communication for the Emergency Rescue Services and plays a very important role in the smooth and efficient operation of the Ambulance Service.
The Control Centre of SHSO (State Health Services Organisation) was created and operates after a Ministerial order (No. 56.472) and is located, along with the Directorate of the Ambulance Service, at the Lakatamia Health Center in Nicosia and has specialised electronic systems.
The Centre operates on a 24-hour basis by nursing officers, who are specifically trained for emergency calls by instructors from major European Centres, and are able to use international protocols for the immediate departure of ambulances, the delivery of first aid instructions by phone and incident management.
It is worth noting that everything is done through electronic systems, calls are recorded and ambulances are monitored through geolocation devices.
The main purpose of the Ambulance Control Centre is to receive all calls and distribute them to ambulances for execution, based on predefined priorities:
Ambulance calls take place mainly via phone, and fall into the following four main categories:
The main objective of the Centre, with the fundamental purpose of saving human lives, is the coordination of ambulance calls, in order to reduce the time the ambulance needs to reach an accident or other serious incident, as well as the reduction of journeys, resulting in an improved management of human and ambulance resources.
