FOI 26-434 Palpatation Incidents

Freedom of Information Request

Reference

FOI 26-434 Palpatation Incidents

Request Date

16 Sep 2026

Response Date

28 Sep 2026

Information Requested

We wish to understand the average time a patient, complaining of chest tightness and palpitations, would
have waited had they called an ambulance around the following: 3.30pm on 24th May 2024

Response

The Scottish Ambulance Service does not hold recorded information that would allow us to identify all
patients who presented with the specific symptoms of chest tightness and palpitations and report their
ambulance response times.
While our systems record a chief complaint category of "Chest Pains", this category does not allow us to
reliably identify all patients whose symptoms included chest tightness or palpitations. Patients presenting
with these symptoms may be recorded under a range of different chief complaints depending on the
circumstances of the call and the outcome of clinical triage.
In order to answer your request, the Scottish Ambulance Service would be required to manually review
each individual incident record, assess the clinical information recorded for each case, and apply
professional judgement to determine whether chest tightness and/or palpitations formed part of the patient's
presentation. We would then need to create a new dataset from those records and undertake further
analysis to calculate response times.
As this information is not held in a recorded form that allows it to be retrieved or reported, and answering
the request would require the creation of new information rather than the provision of information already
held, the Scottish Ambulance Service gives notice under section 17(1) of the Freedom of Information
(Scotland) Act 2002 that the information requested is not held.