Paramedics made my father go to hospital

As a mum of a paramedic this post has touched a nerve with me !
You rang an ambulance and they attended, your father didn’t want to go to hospital.
They were doing their job, which again you requested.
These paramedics train at uni for 3 years, getting into a huge amount of debt, they work 12 hour shifts, sometimes with no breaks and your on here moaning about them and the hospital staff!
You should remember that this service is Free and that they have your fathers best interest at heart!
And what they was saying is that If you don't go and call them again for assistance, you will of course be put to the back of the Que as there's a risk that you would again decline their advice!
Give your head a wobble!

Agree. Didn't have to go. Doesn't have to stay.

i doubt they were saying an ambulance wouldn’t be sent but more of a ‘we can’t guarantee you would get an ambulance if another emergency arises’. These are two different things. Everyone knows how much pressure the ambulance service has these days. As for A&E, I can assure you that ecg would have been checked once it was done, you may not have been told the results. The nurse taking it would not just leave the checking as if something serious happened their job would be on the line. No nurse wants to end up giving evidence at coroners court. Blood results…where I am it’s all on computer, abnormal blood results pop up when you open the list of patients currently in A&E and the labs also phone these through and take the name of the person receiving the call.

A&E is not a prison…he is more than welcome to leave. Paperwork needs to be signed to say he understands the risks, safety netting advice was understood and the options to get help if needed.

you make it sound like it was a personal attack by staff….sometimes staff have seen things happen with a similar situation, such events never leave that persons memory. Or maybe there was something on the ecg that didn’t sit right and def needed a work up at A&E. In any case, your father clearly agreed to go with them!
once you’ve worked in the industry, you would know you cannot force anyone and there are plenty of elderly patients who are adamant they are not going. He had the choice regardless of what they said. But it also has to be the patients decision, not the relatives.

I think it's unfair to call paramedics bullles though, you are understandably angry that he hasn't been seen for a very long time but that's indicative that A&E was very busy so therefore so are the ambulances and that's more what they were trying to warn you of, it's also been the weekend so that makes the demand on the ambulance service higher. They can't promise you that if your dad suddenly did start to deteriorate that an ambulance could get to you quickly. I don't think they blacklist people but they might be a bit wary of prioritising deploying an ambulance to some one that had one earlier and then didn't want it over someone else who has taken seriously ill or injured.

So you presumably told the paramedics the instructions of the cardiac surgeon to ring 999 ? and they advised to attend per his instructions. Yes it's frustrating that you've had a long wait but I dispute that in 10 hours a doctor hasn't reviewed his ecg and bloods. They will have been reviewed and probably nothing to worry about but they won't release him until they've consulted with the cardio respiratory on call and discussed the case

Yes I’m well aware 🤷‍♂️

Yes and deep down she knows this. But she also knows that if she complains about it taking ten hours to be given the all clear when doctors are no doubt dealing with actual life and death cases then she will come over as an entitled madam.

Because the ambulance would be too busy attending people who didn't need them 🙄

The attack had been over for an hour by the time they turned up, so why didn’t you cancel the ambulance? I think paramedics generally have a duty to insist you go get checked over, irrespective of whether you feel better when they arrive or not. Every time I’ve called one the person has been taken to hospital anyway, even if they’re feeling a little better.

Do either of you drive anyway? It’s quicker to drive to a&e than wait for an ambulance.

Well if your DH was having a heart attack at the same time, where would you want them to go? To a person with a history of false alarms, or a new case that didn’t? There are only so much resources.

10 hours later and a doctor is finally with him. It’s just so, so unacceptable

This is the actual problem.

Not that the paramedics gave their best advice. They weren't saying that an ambulance wouldn't come, if they called again, they were saying they're so overstretched that they couldn't guarantee one would be able to arrive in a timely manner, which is true.

If your Dad had been seen by a Dr within a couple of hours, you wouldn't be on here moaning (I doubt you'd be singing their praises either), so that's the real issue here!

Perfectly put!

Even when it was pointed out to this PP that the paramedics had changed from insinuating to actually point blank saying “we won’t send another ambulance” they couldn’t grasp that it was being embellished!

I don’t think the OP will
have complained, they were just unwilling to
lose face on here. Although they asked AIBU, they didn’t really want to know they were.

If he had then died, it would be awful and questions would have then be raised as why the paramedics didn't take him to hospital. They have erred on caution.

I'm sure the paramedics have heard of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, a relatively common medical condition in elderly patients, and something which is still a risk factor for further conditions such as strokes, hence the need for him to be on the anticoagulant medication you have mentioned.

Perhaps the paramedics suggested there would be difficulty with getting an ambulance later due to the event you said is happening locally and the fact it is a bank holiday weekend which always puts pressure on emergency services.

Implying he’d he at the back of the queue if he didn’t follow their advice is terrible.

You called an ambulance, never cancelled an ambulance, your father refused to sign a form saying he didn’t require transport to the hospital. You can remove him from the hospital if you want.

The NHS is completely broken. It’s not the paramedics fault. This is what happens when you get an aging population and free hospital visits.

It never fails to amaze me how gullible some people are. The OP could have said the moon is made of blue cheese - would you blindly believe them? The OP's story was embellished with each post to try to make it sound better from their point of view. Also, it is not up to paramedics to decide when an ambulance is sent.

And for what it's worth, I'm not a NHS worshipper, I don't even live in the UK.

OP is one of the reasons I left nursing. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Everyone knows more than medical staff.

Like others have said, just sign a form and leave.

Having an IV inserted isn't major. I've seen patients pull them out just because they didn't want to take the pole with them to the toilet.

A) the paramedics didn't want to leave him at home with no equipment, no medical expertise, no medication, no doctor.

B) they left him in a hospital with all of these things, filled with other patients who were also having tests for various things.

Next time, if he and everyone else is so sure he knows his own body, none of them will be calling for an ambulance which will solve the issue.

Your post makes me really sad. I truely hope you’ve calmed down and not filed that complaint. Those paramedics did their job. The a&e staff (who will more than likely staff the decision unit) were doing their job. Both in under funded, under resourced, chaotic areas that I imagine you wouldn’t last working in for 5 minutes. Have you any idea how soul destroying it is for them to do their job and then some idiot complains for trying to make sure they didn’t die. I’m glad your dad was ok but that was just sheer luck. Next time he may not be so lucky. If the paramedics said “ok pal. No worries. Don’t bother following our advice” and he had died, would you have been ok with that? GET A GRIP

If he knows his own body, don’t call an ambulance if you don’t need it. He knows so much, he’s holding back an ambulance from someone who does need it.

I had a stroke, a second in the ambulance and a third in a cubicle several hours later that could have been prevented if someone had bothered to come see me. 7 hours later..the golden hours 4 for a stroke. ..they turned up. I’d lost my left side. The FACT says, the sooner we see you, the more of you we can save. …so no one came to save me. Months later another ambulance..I was in it for 7 hours, at the doors to A&E , transferred to another ambulance in the queue as mine had finished their shift for another 3 hours before getting into the hospital . It sucks but it’s the way things are

It’s a bit baffling.

If the paramedics were incompetent, that would mean the hospital staff were perfectly competent. And vice versa. There can’t be a complaint towards two sets of medical staff for acting in opposite directions to the same problem. Someone must have been right 😂

Absolutely this! Which is it @wecangoupupup ?
he didn’t need to go to hospital or should her have been cat1 on admission?

Her issue is simultaneously that her dad wasn’t ill enough to be recommended a trip to hospital by the paramedics and also that her dad was so ill that he should have been top priority when arriving at a&e.