Waiting for an ambulance

[BigcatLittlecat]

I called an ambulance for my elderly mother at 4.45. Got told it's a long wait and to not call back. She fell off her bed and think she has broken her hip. She's in a lot of pain. What can I do, apart from call 999 back?

That's right, the wards are full and there is nowhere for the ambulances to offload their patients. The guys who were with us in the ambulance said they had gone out to one woman that shift who, when she heard about the queue, refused to go with them to hospital. She had fallen and banged her head really hard, was in her 80s and said she would rather die in her bed and in her own home than in an ambulance waiting to go in. They had no choice and left her. They then came to us and then for the rest of the shift, a 12 hour shift, just sat in the ambulance. There were around 15 ambulances parked up outside the hospital throughout the day 12 hours or so but we were there. I didn't see any of them move.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record but please do not try to move her yourself.
if she deteriorates call 999 to be retriaged

We had this situation with my mum a couple of months ago. She had a fall, it was fairly obvious she had broken hip so we phoned for an ambulance, we were told it would be a few hours. 9 hours later we gave up waiting and took her to A&E ourselves, once there she was at least treated fairly quickly - compared to the wait for an ambulance at least!

She had a degenerative condition and the failings in her treatment from the NHS are endless and made her end of life much more painful than it could have been, physically and emotionally. I wish I could say that at least the staff cared but to be honest most (- not all, a few gems stood out) of them really didn’t. The NHS really is on its knees.

DM 85 fell on pavement last week, broke her nose and bled everywhere, then had a stroke.

Neighbour who found her didn’t even bother with an Ambo cos it was a Friday in London. Drunk time.

She was treated and I begged the hospital to keep her till we could get a carer in to, you know, let her into her house and trivia like that.

Thank God we could get a carer at only £500 cash for the night. NHS booted her out at 230am.

One in ten NHS staff are on fully paid long term sick leave. People drink and OD.

The NHS really is broken. I waited 36 hours for a callback from 111 last weekend for mastitis. I felt really ill by the time they called back and got antibiotics. I called after 12 hours as thought I had been missed off list but told, no, it was the sheer volume of calls they were dealing with and told the wait was 24 hours, turned out to be 36. Our GP has no out of hours service and walk in by appointment only now. It made more sense to me why people end up in A&E. I hope your poor mums gets some treatment soon, OP.

As previous poster has said, long term action is to write to your Mp and not vote in a party that is contracting public services

Agree with some other posters. This isn't the ambulance peoples fault. Hospitals are full due to an increasing elderly population and lack of social care provision (home carers, care homes etc) and an increasing number of families unwilling to take any responsibility for loved ones (understandable in some cases). Basically Ambulance bays are full and unable to off load patients to go to other emergency calls as ED is full. ED is full as social care is unstaffed (no carers) and therefore wards are full with patients who are 'medically fit for discharge' but have no where to go. So ED has nowhere to send their patients as wards are full. It's a shit show. Think before you vote is all I can say. NHS staff are trying their best, but can only do so much. I hope you get some hope soon OP.

My daughter originally started training as a Paramedic but had to give up when she was diagnosed as hypermobile so couldnt do the heavy lifting. She retrained as an ODP and is glad she did.

She says that when she covers A&E all the paramedics say the same.....that they spend more time waiting outside hospitals than they do actually doing their job. An entire shift with one patient, waiting for them to be taken in, is not unusual. The crew can't leave until the patient is accepted into hospital, and the hospital staff can't accept them in until there are enough beds, and there are not enough beds ANYWHERE.

Covid found enough "heroes" and Nightingale hospitals but now......where the hell is the infrastructure to keep things going? And yet people still keep saying that no one wants to privatise the NHS. Although thinking about it, that may be factually correct, no politician wants to be the one that says the words, but a lot of them will happily contribute to a situation where private health insurance is the only realisitic way to get timely treatment for anything.

10 day old baby in respiratory distress sucking in under her ribs took 4 minutes from exchange to ambulance control picking up. Exchange had to try again I was beside myself.

Same baby now 7 months old in respiratory distress again sucking in under ribs nearly an hour for an ambulance to arrive. I couldn't have driven her to hospital on my own as she was really struggling.

It's a broken sad state of affairs

This is so sad, so much unnecessary suffering.
I hope you’re mums getting care now

This is shocking, but sadly I know it's true as I have experienced it recently.

I really hope your mum is in hospital now and being treated.

This is terrible, your poor mum.

I really fear for the future as well, everyone seems to agree, more and drastic cuts to public services are coming. I just don't know what else the government things they're going to cut? Why don't they care about A&E or ambulances, even billionaires need ambulances.

Its disgusting, and due to the fact that there are not enough hospital beds, so AE departments are full to the brim with no capacity to take the patients off the ambulance service. People are dying due to the underfunding of the NHS. This is a political decision to undermine peoples faith in a free NHS so the government can continue to sell it off. I’m so sorry about your mum.

The FT recently described the UK as a poor country with some super rich. We just don't have northern Europeans standards of healthcare here anymore.

Absolutely appalling isn't it. We waited 13 hours for an ambulance for my mum.

I agree.
But we get what we vote for. The Tories have never left public services in a better state when they have left office than they were in when they arrived in office.

@BigcatLittlecat is it a possibility to consider a private ambulance?
I imagine they charge a fortune but maybe you're not too far from A&E.

My dad spent 7 hours on the floor waiting for an ambulance for what turned out to be a broken leg this week. The ambulance service did the absolute best they could given that it is stretched beyond paper thin
We are all now of the opinion that this chronic underfunding and mismanagement is a deliberate ploy to force a move to private healthcare. It's disgusting, inhumane and I sincerely hope that every politician who let this happen has to experience the same prolonged pain and fear that my dad felt as he lay on his floor this week.

I'm so sorry about your dad, Harriet. What is he on his own? My mum had one of those things around her neck that calls for help and if she hadn't had that she would've died.

Op- so sorry to read this. Hope help arrives soon.

Everyone else reading this thread in the UK- remember this at election time.

Apologies, I'm dictating and my voice is obviously not as clear as I thought it was!

You must've been out of your mind. I really hope your baby makes great recovery.

I cant help thinking this is actually down to a failing in the private sector, ie care homes. Leaving social care to the private sector has failed to provide enough capacity. The state needs to step in, build, manage and staff care homes to free up hospital space.

This. Do not move her.
Appalling state of the NHS.

People keep shouting this on threads. It really pisses me off. My 81 year old father had a heart attack and fell. The ambulance and A&E was amazing. The wards were shit. Declared him medically fit three times and discharged, despite my protestations that I thought he was still unwell. All three times we were back a day later - in another ambulance and with another 48 hours in A&E because he had sepsis. What a colossal waste of NHS money!!! In the end my fit, strong, independent father died because the NHS was so crap and he had to keep enduring crap treatment. My mother’s consultant, from the memory clinic, so sees a lot of the elderly, says this happens so much with the NHS nowadays and he’s embarrassed how the elderly are treated. My husband was discharged twice with sepsis and a DVT previously too. They’re so desperate to clear beds and tick boxes they don’t nurse nowadays. The NHS is dead. I’m scared of the future. But don’t blame the elderly- it wasn’t them that closed wards, cut corners and put NHS money into non essential procedures.