This is so sad ( ambulance delays)

[Ratched]

Read this earlier and thought how terrible to be so aware that no one was coming to help in time....

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61791151

That is deeply deeply sad. The poor man, to die alone & waiting for help.

In France the fire service are also paramedics. I think that training firemen as a supplement to the ambulance service would be a good route to go down. And also A&E needs to be used for only minor injuries and emergencies.

Mt dd’s gp refused to listen to her babies chest when he was 6 weeks saying she should go to A&E if worried, absolutely ridiculous. She was a new mum with a snuffly baby who wasn’t sure if he was ok. Fortunately she had to see a physio 3 days later who gave her good advice.

As a 999 call handler who takes these kind of repeat calls, this breaks my heart. I would urge anyone who can physically get themselves / family to hospital then to go, get a taxi, take the car so we can attend to these genuine emergencies.
There are so many misconceptions about ambulances, if you ring for a stupid reason like a stubbed toe you will not get an ambulance. A lot of problems come from people ramping up symptoms, as a call taker I can only go off what the person is telling me.
I took a call recently from a carer with a patient who had back pain, they were awaiting a call back from a clinician when amazingly an hour later I took a call from the same carer. Said the patient wasn't breathing. Pretended to do CPR. Actually pretended to do CPR. Worst call as a call taker... 3 ambulances that could have actually been saving lives like this poor man's were sent. She was left at home with instructions to contact the GP. Disgusting.
We are under so much pressure at the moment but people do need to take some responsibility for themselves and get themselves to hospital if possible, in our trust ambulances are queuing for hours to offload patients. You will not be seen quicker in hospital if you arrive via ambulance either.

It terrifies me - in 2018 I had a massive pulmonary embolism and fortunately the ambulance crew were with me in about 6-7 minutes, but there was a queue of ambulances waiting to handover when we arrived at hospital. Fortunately the paramedics managed to jump the queue and get me in straight away, but if they hadn't I'd be dead.

I county my lucky stars I decided to get seriously ill 4 years ago and not now (touch wood!).

That poor poor man, he must have been terrified - and the guilt his poor children must feel.

The whole system, from beginning to end, is screwed; looking at each element of healthcare individually is not going to work - there needs to be a massive overhaul of health and social care from the ground upwards.

Awful.

A friend of mine has a child with hydrocephalus. He has a shunt in his brain, which filters excess fluid to his stomach. A few weeks back, there were extreme signs that his shunt was blocked (this was after, 3 weeks prior, concerns of a minor blockage but being sent away from hospital without even a scan, or being seen by the right department). She called 999 to be told a clinician would call back! 15 minutes later she called again, and it took over an hour for an ambulance to arrive.

By the time the ambulance left, he was paralysed and had lost his speech. On arrival at the nearest major hospital, it was found there's no pediatric neurosurgeon, so he then needed transferred again to another hospital nearly two hours away.

Luckily, the team there were ready for him and the shunt replacement was successful and he's been left with only minor loss of function.

Noone should be waiting an hour on an ambulance whilst watching their child effectively die.

The poor man in that article must have been terrified. Rest peacefully, Kenneth. You deserved better.

That poor man. The whole system is broken due to chronic underfunding, an ageing population, rising rate of chronic conditions, too many managers, raising expectations etc. This causes a lack of GPs, ambulances being held up because of a shortage of beds for the people already in A and E (who possibly could have seen a GP but could not get an appointment) and lack of carers in the community and social workers. Where to start?

Recently our local hospitals in two different trusts have put new computer systems in, designed to improve information sharing across the hospital. Both have been disastrous leading to queues of ambulances waiting to offload, delays around discharge and errors in paperwork.

The different trusts have chosen two different systems, and neither work.

Add to that people demanding healthcare who clearly don't need it, massively risk averse 111/999 phone triage, staff shortages in the NHS and shortages in social care, 6 million people on waiting lists for treatment.... I think we really have reached a point where the NHS is broken.

@Whooshaagh unfortunately it turns out most fire crew in the UK don't want to add ambulance care to their toolkit - it's been tried at various levels but never really taken off. They are very different skill sets and ways of working, and I suspect in many places you've got paramedics who do Fire as well rather than fire crew with added paramedic skills.

It is awful. So sad for the poor man and his family.

Unfortunately, this is all too common. Exactly the same thing happened to my mother's friend who is, I believe, in her eighties. She had a fall at home (lives alone and has no other family). She managed to reach her phone and called 999 but no ambulance came for 6 hours. She did survive, but had serious injuries similar to this man's, was in hospital for several weeks and now has greatly reduced mobility.

She is back home now, lives alone and has no care package in place. When I visit my mother and help her do her shopping we always phone the lady and ask if she needs anything too. If she does then I take it up afterwards.

The whole NHS is a shambles, or at best very patchy. I just want a health service that works for everyone, but that seems like too much to ask, especially with Tories in power. Scary.

This is heartbreaking. I work as a nurse for the 111 service. Every single shift there are people who phone in knowing the exact buzz words to say to get an ambulance. We have to go by what they say on the call, despite knowing they're not an emergency and have done this every day fir months. Other times we get people who just assume an ambulance is a free taxi service and are offended at going to appointments at their own cost. The level of entitlement out there is outstanding.

Then we get THE call, the call from someone who genuinely needs help and you do whatever you can but aware the ambulances are tied up with so many non emergencies.

As a last resort we ask the fire service to attend people who have fallen as long as there's no injury. Many a time I've wished i could log off the computer and go to these poor people myself. I'm actually looking at leaving nursing as after 20 years, things are worse than ever.

My FIL had a stroke just before covid, in 2020. 6 hours for an ambulance. Last year my eldest broke his ankle while out skateboarding - we were told at least 9 hours for an ambulance. Luckily two doctors happened to be at the skate park and helped get him to hospital (along with his friends fetching a wheelchair, making splints from branches etc) - I would have done huge damage if I'd moved him alone. My MIL has just got out of hospital - a&e on Friday, wanted to keep her in for a scan, which only happened yest - in the meantime covid on the ward so causing her huge stress. It's all looking quite grim.

Sadly you are right.

Someone I know went to his GP last week with pain in a part of his body. GP could feel a lump and said he needed a scan and to present at A+E. I mean it worked well for him, he had a scan which showed he needed a biopsy which was done yesterday so within a week from first seeing the GP. But I'd this honestly what needs to happen to get a scan? Isn't there a way for the GP surgeries to speak to the hospital to arrange a scan? As they didn't scan him the day he went to A+E, instead he was sent home and had to go back 2 days later. It just seems massive waste of everyone's time to present at A+E for something I would expect the doctor to be able to arrange.

Absolutely heartbreaking for this poor man

But he had five sons. Surely if your dad is 94 and lives on his own you’d have some sort of support system worked out whereby if he has an accident someone is able to be with him?

People are living longer and services are hugely overstretched, I think families need to take some steps to support their elderly relatives more and not just leave it all to the state.

Had a resident wait 13 1/2 hours, with a broken hip for an ambulance. The crew had just come on and even they were disgusted, that we had to wait for so long.

I hear your I work for another blue light service so deal with the ambulance service multiple times a day.

The utter shit they have to attend is ridiculous (I’m putting my tin hat on to say this, but that the ambulance service HAS to prioritise a drug addict who has ODd on street Valium over someone like that poor old man is an absolute scandal.

I know that’s a statement which will have a lot of MN up in arms, but I don’t apologise for it, and I’m not going to defend it, this is the reality I’ve worked with for 20+ years, amd it’s about time people saw the reality

In that case he may have had someone with him when he died, but he would not have been saved.
My MiL fell in her kitchen doorway in a sheltered housing flat. They phoned for an ambulance then rang us, we lived a 45 minute drive away and got to her an hour and 15 minutes after her fall.
We were told NOT to move her, the ambulance service rang twice to check she had not deteriorated, but she wet herself and was distraught.
Almost 5 hours after her fall, paramedics arrived.
No, she was not an emergency, but she was an 86 year old woman in terrible pain (cracked 2 ribs and banged her head, cutting it open on the way down) . We were told categorically to leave her there, keep her warm and hydrated.
That's a very long winded way of saying that even of all 5 sons had rushed to the scene, the outcome would probably have been the same.

I also quite understand that emergency services have to be sent to time wasters who abuse the system .
This needs to change. They need to get a couple if yellow cards then a red card, if they die for real after crying wolf for years, tough shit.
I have more issues with those people than alcoholics/ drug abusers tbh.

An absolutely horrendous read.

There are no ambulances as the GP community still refuse to reopen normal services. GP after GP come on here and say they are working normally but the fact is that they are not everywhere and I would argue those that are is a minority.

Normal GP services mean you are able to actually book a non urgent appointment in advance.
Normal GP services mean you have an option for e-consult/ telephone/ or face to face.
Normal GP services means getting rid of the ridiculous sorry you need to ring back in 1 min when the lines re open and the end of this “ring at 2 or at 8am”

People can’t get an GP appointment, most have tried for days or weeks so In the end present to A&E.
A&E are then busy.
Ambulance comes to drop off but because A&E is so busy, they are there for much longer.
As they are stuck at A&E, they can’t go out to more patients.
The wait gets longer.
People get sicker.
Round and round we go.

Services across the NHS have expanded opening hours, extended days, Saturday and Sunday working. Using nurse practitioners, Physician Associates and other AHPs to keep things moving.

Guess who haven’t?

I would hazard a guess that as the huge majority GP surgeries are businesses that are NHS commissioned services (completely normal) that should point you in the direction of why things have not improved. I don’t in any way want to say GPS are over paid by what they do but there are certainly financial implications of hiring more people/ specialist/ extending days when in comes to the overall profitability of the service.

I agree, anyone who has not come into contact with the reality that is the NHS recently is in for a big shock if they need an ambulance. We live rurally and after our experiences with elderly MIL last month I have absolutely no faith that an ambulance would reach me quickly if I had an accident.

On the second occasion she was admitted she spent at least 10 hours in the ambulance once she got to hospital.

An article I read (written by a doctor) blamed the management target to reach as close to 100% bed occupancy as possible, which means there aren't enough beds to empty new admissions into. I'm sure managers would have their own version.

MIL is now in the classic situation of being a bed blocker - too weak to come home but not ill enough for hospital. I have to say that the whole system and organisation leaves a lot to be desired, the staff really want to help but they seem totally handicapped by a far too rigid bureaucratic system - in our case it's two systems because we are in Cornwall and the hospital is in Devon, which adds a whole new nightmarish level to proceedings. Not to mention that the fact that she needed two ambulances on two consecutive days in the first place was because she was discharged too early and with no proper assessment of her needs.

That is so sad.
I heard a radio caller saying he had rung for his wife and then rang back five hours later to say don't bother coming, she's died.

The ooh GP rang 999 for my mum. We waited 6 hours and rang 999 twice during that time. We were put on hold, didn't even speak to a call handler for a while. She asked me to make sure she didn't die on the floor of the living room. When they finally arrived they were evidently having a terrible shift but it was taken out on my poor mum. One of them told her she had wasted their time as she didn't need an ambulance and nothing was wrong with her. She went to A&E and was on a trolley all night. She had to wet herself as there were no staff to help her get to a toilet. She had no drink. She later died. The system is broken.

My friends keep having home births and I think but what will you do if you need an ambulance ?

Walk in centres are being closed constantly. These took pressure off A&E. Now ambulances are stuck in a&e waiting to be able to hand over. Paramedic's hands are tied but they're the ones who get blamed when people die.

It's a horrible situation

www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-hospital-bed-numbers

This is a long read but very interesting.

That poor man, it is heartbreaking knowing that if someone had been able to attend and actually lay eyes on him and check his obs, he would have probably got help sooner, it might not have had an effect on the eventual outcome but he wouldn't have died alone, cold and frightened on the floor.

Truly awful events on this thread .
We were obviously very lucky - but it absolutely should not be a matter of luck .
Just wanted to say a public thank you to South Western Ambulance Trust , the call handler and crew - I have contacted them directly also .💐❤️

I agree about prosecuting misuse or pranks. It would not be a fine if it were my choice but something more impacting. Take away someone's mobile phone number or their passport, for example.