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

My mum waited 14 hours after a stroke in August this year. The ambulance service was made aware it was a suspected stroke. She was advised to get a taxi but couldn't get one to come. I am 600 miles away. She missed the window for clot-busting treatment and died 6 weeks later in hospital after two more strokes.

This should have been prioritised. What is the point of the FAST adverts if you can't get an ambulance to come?

Overnight with a frail elderly woman who'd broken her arm. She was starting to go into shock just before they arrived. We couldn't take her in a car because we were on duty in the adjacent care home at the time, which couldn't be left unstaffed.

3hrs - sat in middle of the road in the town centre in January with a badly injured elderly gentleman who’d fallen from his electric wheelchair. For 3 hours I knelt on the icy cobbles, in the middle of the road, holding the gentleman’s hand and checking his responses.
I had to even get other passers by to block off the road.
The injured elderly man was very frail, had sustained a head injury with an amount of blood on the back of his skull, was confused (possibly concussed and/or dementia), had diabetes (and was unable to do his bloods or take nutrition whilst stranded all afternoon in the road), and was incontinent of urine (catheterised). Whilst I was in the road caring for him his catheter bag reached capacity. To protect him from becoming saturated in his own urine and then it quickly freezing, I had to call to others to go into the Starbucks and get large paper cups. I then got people to form a ring around us with their coats whilst I emptied the catheter bag into a series of cups and got someone to pour them down the drain in the street.

This poor, bewildered, injured, fail man lay in the MIDDLE OF THE ROAD in the town centre for THREE HOURS! I called 999 eleven times. 😔

He survived. His niece got my contact details and made contact with me to thank me (not needed) and gave me updates on his condition until he was discharged and went into a care home. Such a lovely gentleman. Such a terrible, undignified way to spend some of his final days of his 90 years.

Was this you?
You were hit by a car, found unconscious in the road, somebody called an ambulance and they refused to attend?
There's got to be more to this story surely?

This is similar to my experience. The call handler was rude, sarcastic and dismissive. Refused to believe my symptoms or send help. Eventually dh persuaded her to let him speak to her supervisor. I couldn't move or speak due to being in the middle of a heart attack. The second person eventually agreed to send a first responder. Dh literally had to beg. That paramedic radioed for an ambulance. I was lucky to survive. I am still dealing with the mental trauma.

9 hours for my mum, she was too poorly to put in the car. She passed away two days later.

Then 6 hours for my dad with sepsis. He was too poorly to put in the car, plus he could never have sat in the waiting room. He was in hospital for 9 days, but recovered well.

My now 18 year old DD broke her leg when she was 8 on a bike ride, we were in the middle of nowhere and her foot was pointing the wrong way. Dialled 999 and they refused to come out, my brother had to come and get us. She was literally white as a sheet and completely silent, it was horrible. We had to ask a random house to take our bikes in!

I’ve only had to call 999 once, and it took 10 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. On a Saturday night. This was a couple of months ago.

over an hour for a head injury but the person was also drunk and refused to get into my car, unlike most the people there I was sober (driving). Was told 12 hour wait 3 weeks ago (person at church) so I drove her myself to the minor injuries (10 minutes away) until who after triaging conjured up an ambulance quickly to take her to the main a & e 30 minutes away. The injury was superficial but her blood pressure was all over the place

45 minutes. I was told to ring back if there was a deterioration so they could bump me up the queue. No alternative was possible as it was for someone who had passed out on the floor.

Ambulance shouts are triaged and prioritised. It's not a queue and 999 calls made after yours may get seen sooner if they are more urgent. If you are kept waiting for 7 hours it's usually because you aren't in immediate danger and won't have significantly worse outcomes from being left. During that 7 hour wait the paramedics saved several lives from shouts that were triaged to be more urgent. When DH was injured we were fortunate that one of the people present was a doctor - in a totally different speciality and not able to provide on the spot treatment - but he advised me to call a taxi because it was obvious that while DH was injured and in pain, he wasn't getting any worse and wasn't in any danger, so if we had called 999 we would have been waiting for hours, but we didn't.

@Hillyhillyholly the blue lights aren't usually put on at all for the hours-long-wait cases. When my son was bluelighted to hospital unable to breathe it was 10 minutes between 999 call and the ambulance arriving and they used the blue lights then.

I was thinking about this today. When my DH needed an ambulance it was a nine hour wait. What’s the point of the sirens and the blue lights, when you’ve been waiting nine hours?

I've never called one. Someone else called one for my kid once though. Ambulance took about 90 seconds.

11 hours I have a degenerative sacroiliac joint condition and woke up and literally could not move , it then took a further 1.5 hours to give me enough pain relief to move me :(

My cousin calls them regularly, once he they can within 10 minutes but at the weekend they told him it was a 12 hour wait. So he lied at told them he had overdosed.

He’s an attention seeker and has been warned numerous times about wasting valuable services including the police.

It is sad but yes sometimes there isn’t any ambulances
if they are all going to higher priority calls or tied up waiting at hospital. None being available definitely isn’t unusual

92 year old father in law fell and was on the floor all night waiting for and ambulance. Twice. In the village where I live, there are regularly very long waits. We had a fatality a couple of years back because the ambulance was massively delayed.

When I called for an ambulance for an elderly neighbour who was having a stroke they told me there were no ambulances available for the foreseeable future! Told me to ring a taxi or bring her in myself. Shocking. I couldn’t lift her so had to wait for another neighbour to come to help get her in the car. She made a poor recovery and died a few months later. Very sad.

Our incident with a 25 hour wait was the first time we had ever had to call an ambulance & our first ever time in A&E. DH works for the NHS so we're very conscious that his wait was exceptional.

When my dad hd a cardiac incident at the weekend an ambulance was with him within 20 minutes and they live very rurally with 1 hospital with A& E in the county.

Dad had previously had a cardiac arrest whilst out walking. The air ambulance was there within minutes and Dad is still with us because someone was brave enough to get to the nearest defibrillator & use it.

Knocked down by a hit and run driver and found unconscious in the road.
They wouldn’t send an ambulance and was taken to A&E in the back of a car, triaged and was seen immediately.

I have waited anything from 30mins-4/5/6 hours with people. I know one lady who waiting 14 hours.

My DH called an ambulance for me when I had mastitis which was starting to turn septic. I was delirious, confused, sweating, shivering and vomiting. He waited half an hour on hold without being able to speak to a dispatcher at all, by which time his mum had arrived to look after the baby and he got me into the car and drove me to A&E himself. An operator called him back as we arrived at A&E to ask if we still wanted an ambulance. This was almost an hour and a half since he’d phoned 999 and at this point I was hallucinating and everything kept turning black.

Thank goodness he was able to drive me that time, but I’m terrified that one day there might be an emergency with my daughter and we won’t be able to get through on 999 again.

I’m the same I’m lucky I’ve never had to call one. I’m shocked at all the elderly people being left for hours on end with broken hips. It’s really not right and shocking that someone would he left for that long when there is no other option.

I would say that’s incredibly unusual. I’ve called at least 4 to deal with incidents/accidents I’ve seen in the streets. But then I’ve always lived in big cities so guess more likely to see incidents 🤷‍♀️

7 hours at work with a resident that had fallen on fire escape stairs :(

Had to wait for paramedics, he reacts badly to rescue meds. We're 2 years seizure free thankfully but the trauma stays with you