AIMS: Documenting the quality of emergency dispatch centres handling of emergency calls regarding intoxicated unconscious patients. METHODS: Interview with eight emergency dispatch centre directors and a nationwide survey among 313 dispatchers in Norway were performed. In addition, a customized scoring system was used to evaluate dispatcher log recordings of real cases. The recordings were compared with information from corresponding ambulance records. RESULTS: Ninety-nine percent of the dispatchers stated that they used the Norwegian protocol for medical emergencies and 89% of them found it useful. The interviews, the survey, and the recordings, however, documented frequent deviation from the protocol. This instructs ambulance dispatch for any unconscious patient, but 21% stated that they would not dispatch any resource for an unconscious patient without further survey in alcohol-related cases. This was significantly more often (P