Hey there and welcome to Apple Support Communities alaskajen616,
We can certainly understand your concern and are here to help.
We recommend checking out these steps on how use Emergency SOS and see if that matches up with your procedures.
" Make an emergency call on iPhone
In case of emergency, you can use iPhone to quickly call for help.
If you choose to share your Medical ID, iPhone can send your medical information to emergency services when you call or text 911 or use Emergency SOS (U.S. only). To learn more about Medical ID, see Create a Medical ID in the iPhone User Guide.
Note: For emergency help in some areas, you can also send a text message to 911. In places that don’t offer this, you might receive a “bounce-back” message indicating that the text didn’t go through. See the Apple Support article Text 911 on iPhone or Apple Watch.
With Emergency SOS, you can quickly and easily call for help and alert your emergency contacts. Because of this, it’s important to make sure that the person or people assigned as emergency contacts are people you trust.
Find out how: To view a task below, select the plus button 
next to its title.
Change your Emergency SOS settings
- Go to Settings
> Emergency SOS. - Do any of the following:
- Turn Call with Hold on or off: Press and hold the side and volume buttons to start a countdown to call emergency services.
- Turn “Call with 5 presses” on or off: Rapidly press the side button five times to start a countdown to call emergency services.
- Manage your emergency contacts: In Health, tap Set Up Emergency Contacts or Edit Emergency Contacts. See Set up and view your Medical ID in the iPhone User Guide.
Set up or change emergency contacts "
For additional information, check out this link: Make an emergency call on iPhone - Apple Support
These steps will help ensure your device is working with ease and can fix common issues like the ones you’re experiencing.
Kindest regards!
