The South Island emergency medical dispatcher spoke to the Otago Daily Times amid a rise in hostility aimed at emergency services this summer.
Hato Hone St John Southland and Otago District operations manager David Milne said the rise in abuse came as people had been "overindulging" in the holiday period and abusing staff.
"We’re seeing violence and aggression particularly driven by drugs and alcohol."
The dispatcher, who has been a call handler for the past five years but wished to remain anonymous, told the ODT she and her colleagues answered at least one abusive call every day.
"The average person would probably get some sort of insult or shouted at, mocked or sworn at, probably at least once a shift."
She had personally received death threats in the past.
"I’ve had somebody tell me that they’re going to hunt me and my family down and put bullets in us and put holes in us."
A lot of people did not understand the process for emergency calls, and got impatient and frustrated over the phone, she said.
There had been a few times she had left work in tears.
"It can be quite disheartening and quite deflating really, when all you want to do is help people."
The abuse made it difficult to obtain all the information needed to send medical support.
Mr Milne said the number of reported incidents of abuse had been increasing.
Last year, there were eight physical assaults on frontline staff, two sexual harassment incidents and eight verbal abuse incidents,
but abuse incidents were often under-reported, so there were likely more that had happened, Mr Milne said.
The service had a zero tolerance approach and encouraged staff to leave the scene if incidents occurred.
