What's the longest you have had to wait for an ambulance?7

It all depends on ticking the boxes on the call handler's list. In the right order. If you get it wrong you can be categorised incorrectly. My heart attack was absolutely text book and the call handler clearly thought we were making it up. No way were they sending anybody. Terrifying.

It is a tough call sometimes.
DH decided that doing CPR on the pavement somewhere between home and hospital would be more risky than continuing to plead with the call handler. He reasoned that if he ended up doing CPR on the floor at home they would have to send somebody. Hopefully.

I think more people need to get the patient there themselves rather than sit and wait
when my dad collapsed we were told 4 hours so we scooped him up and got him in
if we had waited I don’t think
we would have had the same outcome
his stomach had ruptured into his abdomen

I don’t think people realise just how few ambulance crews are on duty at any one point in time. Even 10, 15, 20 years ago I was regularly the only, or one of only two or three paramedics on duty overnight, with maybe three crews total to cover a large city and surrounding areas. It is literally clearing from one job, straight to the next. We couldn’t even do our start of shift checks properly. The second you log on you’re out the door. It’s worse now and pretty much all ambulance services are on a recruitment freeze too so it will only get worse.

More than 4 hours, and an inevitably dead person 😔 Apparently, according to the tv adds, you should act quickly in the case of a stroke. I did, the ambulance did not.

4-ish hours. It was an elderly neighbour who slipped in the road and had a very obvious broken leg.

But that was pre-covid times and while I thought it was outrageous at the time tbh nowadays I'd probably think it was okay.

He was fine thankfully.

My daughter had a seizure and they came in about half an hour.

I helped an old lady who fell in the street and was lying right on the edge of the kerb. I put my scarf under her head which was bleeding, stood on the road so she didnt get hit by a car and my partner rang for an ambulance. They said the wait would be 5 hours. Luckily a nurse came by and decided it was safe to move her off the edge of the freezing cold pavement. Eventually she took her to the hospital rather than wait 5 hours. Absolutely shocking.

Not us, but 80 year old neighbour.

He went out at 0930 to scrape the ice from his car window and slipped on ice. Ambulance called. It finally arrived just before 1800!! This was in January and he was outside all that time. We offered to take him in our estate car but was told it was highly dangerous to do this as any movement from the broken bone could have severed an artery. Appalling. We covered him in blankets and ran an extension lead to an electric blanket but could not stop the cold coming up from underneath him.

50 mins with a suspected heart attack, that landed up being as long as it would have taken us to drive. Fortunately I was fine.
Not impressed with the speed of response but couldn't fault the care both in the ambulance and at A&E. West Wilts. As we age I think living closer to the hospital would be a good idea as we are equi distance from 2 hospitals and the same ambulances cover both.

I called 111 and they said they were sending an ambulance for me. Gave up waiting after 4 hours. It was early hours and DH doesn’t drive. As soon as a taxi office was open I called a taxi. I had sepsis.

Miscarriage, told to phone ambulance by gynae ward, about 40 minutes

Transfer from attempted homebirth with ds2, midwife called ambulance, about 20 minutes i think

Car crash outside our house, about 20 minutes

Ds2 collapsed at park run, dr called ambulance, 20 minutes

When ds2 overdosed (why is it always ds2?!?!) dh just drove him in as we only live 10 minutes from the hospital. Although the reaction he got when he arrived made us think in hindsight phoning ahead might have been a good idea

My late DMIL (94) waited 27 hours after falling out of bed and fracturing her femur in a care home. Because she was in a care home and being looked after, she wasn't viewed as urgent. Then she was hospitalised for six weeks, before discharge back to the care home, where she died five hours later -- as soon as she was alone.

I’ve never needed one, but 8 mins for late DH. London/NK borders. Pretty good.👍

I live very rurally and have a heart problem. The ambulance always gets here within half an hour and I cannot fault their care. They are always wonderful.
I wish I could say the same for what happens when I get to A&E. The contrast is huge.

I fell off a horse a few years ago. Drove home and couldn't get out of the car I'd seized up so badly. Called non-emergency number for advice who promptly said I was slurring and missing words out (I was totally unaware!) and that they'd called an ambulance, and under no circumstances was I to move. This was just after 8pm.
By 1am I'd given up waiting, got my ex partner to drag me out of the car, dosed myself up on painkillers and went to bed, having called to cancel the ambulance.
Went down to a&e the next day who promptly attached me to a spinal board 🤦‍♀️ I had a head to hip scan (not MRI, the other one?) and fine, just concussed, thankfully.

Sounds about right. Problem is cat 1 is supposed to be 8 minutes. Cat 2 30.

If you have a cardiac arrest, serious bleed or can’t breathe. That’s you or your family dead.

I work in a school. One of our lads got knocked off his bike by a car on the street outside school, his friend saw it happen and ran into school to get help. He was lying in the middle of the road and his arm was obviously badly broken (pointing the wrong way), we had no idea whether he'd hit his head or not. We waited for 3 hours for the Ambulance. He was freezing lying in the road but we'd been told not to try to move him so all we could do was pile our coats on top of him and try to keep him calm.

A colleague of mine is from the Birmingham area and worked in Rugby until recently. He estimated that he could usually expect an ambulance for a client within the hour there. It’s funny how people’s experiences differ but obviously this depends on the demand to service at the time. He doesn’t believe ambulances actually exist in our current area, we have always ended up taking people ourselves due to the extended wait times.

I was told I would have to wait 7 hours for an ambulance for my 5 month old who was having breathing problems. Obviously I didn't actually wait and got someone to drive us to hospital.

20 mins for a 15 month old with bronchiolitis and croup who was really struggling to breathe in the middle of the night - they were incredible and had given him steroids and oxygen within two minutes of arriving to hold him over until we got to hospital. Feel very fortunate they got to us so quickly. The ambulance was sent by 111 when we called them for advice and told them his heart rate and oxygen level rather than by us calling 999.

We live in London near two big hospitals so not sure if that makes it quicker.

6 hours at a school.
We could not move the pupil as they had an extremely severe dislocation of the knee, which could not be reinserted. Everytime we touched them they screamed.

This is only relevant if you don’t believe that dignity in death has any value. We can all imagine a better death than after several hours on a concrete floor.

5 hours on a rugby pitch with spinal injuries and subsequent spiral break of tibular and fibular.

My uncle was in a car accident a few months ago and the fire brigade took him to hospital as the ambulance didn't show up after 10 minutes.

It was lucky they did as he kept saying he was fine but he had broken 3 ribs and punctured a lung! He kept trying to go to work but the fire officers wouldn't let him.
He's on loads of pain medication for a disability so didn't feel a thing, so a bit unusual.

About half an hour.
My youngest fell unconscious while she had flu. She was 3, my 5 year old was asleep, I was a single mum, it was 2am and id just moved so didn't know anyone to help. I had about 3 ambulances in the end, they treated her at home and were fabulous. There were no long lasting complications. It was a new strain of flu that year and they didn't want anyone with it in hospital.

The only other time I called an ambulance it took 5 minutes but the guy was dead by the time they got to me.

Anything else I've got a taxi, and the taxi driver has never charged me.