97 Yr old Gran waiting 8 hours for an ambulance with a broken hip!

Im so sorry your poor gran is going through this. As a paramedic I speak for myself and many of my colleagues and we all absolutely despise going to these jobs as unfortunately your gran will have been triaged as a low priority call. I especially hate ring run to this type of job and getting stood down for something that gets triaged a higher priority but turns out to be less. After even just 1 hour on the floor she is at huge risk of a condition called Rhabdomyolysis.
I would ring back and tell them she is in severe pain.
As a 97 year old a fall from standing can contribute to significant injuries, especially when mixed with such as anti coagulant meds, frailty etc.
Are you sure she doesn’t have any Rib injuries, head injury, Back pain, Neck pain, Abdominal pain? If she develops any shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, chest pain, abdominal pain or swelling, new neurological defect- weakness, numbness, tingling, confusion, icontinence of urine or feaces, loss of consciousness or drowsy or unresponsive, palpitations, fast heart rate, fast breathing, no pulses felt at the wrist then ring back as these are all red flag signs for a serious injury and would elicit a higher priority call (I hope). I’m not a call handler unfortunately so I do not have any knowledge of the pathways system.
in my job I have found that many people don’t ring back when their relative deteriorates so by the time we get there they can be extremely poorly.

I hope your gran gets the anssistance she needs and the ambulance arrives soon but deffo ring back and give them the proper picture of how much she is suffering.

Years ago I used to volunteer in a geriatric hospital (late 70s when I was a St John Ambulance cadet in my teens). Maybe they could be brought back along with more cottage hospitals for convalescence. The bulk of the nursing staff needn't be so qualified as there wouldn't be so much acute care so staffing costs could be lower.

I don't know. I'm just thinking aloud. I may be talking bollocks.

I had similar at the start of the year, my 57 year old mum was waiting 5 hours for an ambulance with suspected stroke. She actually had a catastrophic brain bleed and we lost her as it wasn’t survivable.

I'm so sorry. We lost my brother to the same thing late last year. He was in a different country and the advance paramedics were with him in ten minutes. He was seen immediately in hospital. There wasn't anything to be done but he was made comfortable until he passed in the early hours of the following morning.

Through the shock and grief, the fast, caring treatment he received was comfort and I'm heartbroken for you and anyone else that has had the opposite of that compounding their grief and distress.

My aunt lives in an extra care facility where there is care available for her 24 hours a day- the NHS have now 3x this year simply put her in a taxi and sent her back there at night with no notice. Carers are not sitting in the foyer just waiting on the off-chance hospital patients to turn up . So she turns up in a normal taxi, no one knows she has been discharged, she is in her nightie and dressing gown, can not walk , is blind and the taxi driver can not get past the security door or get her into her flat because it is locked.He has to try to find carers who can be anywhere as they are seeing to other residents.
Why can't the NHS do an arranged discharge? The carers would be waiting to receive her. 3x this has happened.
She pays for every minute (and more) of the care she has every day. And it is decent care. The bit that does not work in her case is the NHS.

She has now been constipated (opiates) for 15 days. We have rang the GP 4 times and no one has visited. They promise every time we or the carers ring and no one visits. She has 3 different laxatives on prescription daily but they are not working. She needs an enema and the carers are not allowed to give her enemas. I would bet my month's salary she will end up being taken to A and E tomorrow - when if the Dr just sent a nurse to give her an enema it could be dealt with at home in an hour.

3 weeks ago tonight my DH started a 25 hour wait for an ambulance. They called back every 4 hours to say they would be with us soon. He had a DVT which went from his hip to his knee.

In the emergency room we were told that they might not be able to save his leg. He finally came home last night with one leg which works and another which doesn't for now.

Thankfully my 86 year old mum only had to wait an hour when she broke her hip in August.

Were you working in A&E in 2009? Can you honestly say with a straight face that things were as bad then as they are now?

True, the waiting times for surgery in Wales are much longer and they have been under Labour control for years.

We need to move to a European system, but nobody wants to pay for it.

I’m fuming for you. She deserves better

The problem is that getting an ambulance is only the start of it. Earlier this year, after waiting for hours for an ambulance, we then waited outside A&E with my MIL with a fractured hip for 9 hours in the back of an ambulance! At one point I thought we were in, as we actually got out and she had an X-ray; but we had to go back out to the ambulance to continue waiting. We finally got in…yay! But no, that was to queue in the corridor to A&E.

The whole thing is broken. I dread getting old/injured/sick

bloody hell, I’m sorry. I hope you’ve been able to make her a bit more comfortable.

@LuluBlakey1 LuluBlakey1 · Today 21:10
My 92 year old aunt- who can barely walk with a walker, has osteoporosis and scoliosis and is blind- was left in her wheelchair in A and E overnight with pneumonia and no treatment and a thin blanket. She was then given 24 hours of intravenous anti-biotics, then an enema at 8pm.
An NHS Dr assured her sister at 7pm that she would not be discharged that night and that when she was it would be in an ambulance and after liaison with her assisted care facility.

At 8.30pm that night she was discharged into a normal taxi, in a nightdress and dressing gown. The taxi driver drove her back to her extra-care accommodation - where no one had no idea she was being discharged and there was no one to meet her. She had emptied her bowels in the taxi.

A carer who happened to be passing by helped the taxi driver get her into her flat, showered her down and got her into bed. However the enema kept having it's effects and she was found on the shit-covered bathroom floor the next morning very weak and cold.
And the hospital refused to return her wheelchair- it is hers not an NHS wheelchair. In the end I went to collect it, found it in the ward and just told them I was taking it back as she had paid for it.
The NHS is absolutely fucked.

Oh my god @LuluBlakey1 that is horrific. yOur poor aunt.
did you complain? this is one of the worst things I've read about NHS failings and we have all read so many I'm sure.

this should be drawn to the attention of MPs, the media, the hospital itself, everyone. It's shocking. How can this be allowed to happen in an economically affluent western developed country? Just the same as @LoveCherryTree 's granny. It's enough to want to drive people to an uprising and civil war.

Labour have screwed up NHS in Wales what makes you think it can sort NHS England out

Yes people do realise it's on the news all the time.
I also helped an old man after a fall last January.
There was a fair wait for an ambulante and he had nobody to wait him, no family etc.

In the end two kind members of the public took him to a and e in their car to save the wait.
It's the way it is.

What did Asda staff do? that is more important, seeing as she was in their doorway.

And another reason why the euthanasia bill won't help. You'll have people suggesting that once you get to a certain age you shouldnt be using the services any more

So, you’re saying it’s the patient’s family’s fault that we’re in this mess? Just making sure we’re clear, I bet that’s going to help OP and her nan in this traumatic situation, so much. She’s going to be so grateful that you posted that here. People must remark on your compassion all the time.

I’m so sorry it’s honestly awful! I’m an elderly nurse and it breaks my heart when we have admissions of elderly that have been on the floor up to 24 hours!

I had similar at the start of the year, my 57 year old mum was waiting 5 hours for an ambulance with suspected stroke. She actually had a catastrophic brain bleed and we lost her as it wasn’t survivable. I did ask in ICU if they thought her wait for an ambulance would have changed the outcome. She was high priority and they had to divert an ambulance in the end from another area but I’ll always unfortunately wonder ‘what if’

Her sister had been with her on the ward at 7pm and was assured by the Dr she was definitely not going to be discharged that night- enema going to be given as she suffers constipation from morphine. Her sister is 80 and at that point felt safe to go home, assuming the Dr was telling her the truth.

Why are you telling me to wake up? I’m more than aware of the issues, I have consultants, doctors, nurses and other NHS workers in my family and frienship group. All of them see it as a case of bad use of resources, bad structure and bad management rather than it all being about immigration. It sounds like you read too much of a certain newspaper.

We’ve been one of those families. One of those families who are unable to take an indefinite amount of unpaid leave from work several times a year to give full time care to an elderly relative deemed well enough to be discharged- can’t stand unaided, walk to the loo, or make a piece of toast, but they can go home with no care in place…

The only way the NHS and social care will be ‘fixed’ is if people pay for it. If I hear FIL say one more time that he paid full stamp I will scream. They didn’t put it in an account with his name on, and even if they did it wouldn’t be worth nearly enough to pay for the care he’s receiving. The system is horrifically expensive to run, and it simply needs to be paid for. People don’t want an NI increase and they don’t want to sell granny’s house, so where does the money come from?

Oh my word that's horrific, poor lady

Not sure what your problem is?

I was very glad they came so fast when I was hit by a speeding car.

There is always one ill informed idiot making sweeping statements about NHS Managers who hasn’t a clue what that term means in practice - likely read it in the Daily Mail as it’s bandied about in their comments section by the people frothing at the mouth about immigrants coming over here and filling the NHS beds.

Who should be expected to manage resources in the NHS? Shall we get a clinician who has studied for years on end in a medical specialty to prioritise that over actually treating patients?

The problems affecting the NHS are many and varied. If people want to have an overview perhaps they could start with the recent Darzi report - I’m not saying it’s 100% correct but has been written by people who actually work in the NHS rather than by someone who claims to know all the problems but in reality hasn’t a clue.

You’ll have seen many people explaining about the role that a lack of effective social care plays in improving patient flow through the hospital. Social care offerings were decimated under the Tory government. The hospital cannot simply discharge someone who is deemed healthy enough to no longer need to remain if there is nowhere for them to safely go. Many of these people are elderly, staying in hospital is actually far less safe for them than being at home with adequate care provision.

The solution isn’t simply building more hospitals - it is about prevention, it’s about best use of resources and right care at the right time, it’s about treating people in the community rather than thinking that the only place to get effective treatment is a hospital.