Question about ambulances?

[Bookist]

Have got 'Ambulance' on in the background right now. It's clear how strained and under pressure the ambulance service is.

The senior paramedic is en route to a call of an elderly man, found not breathing and cold in a care home. But before he arrives he's told the elderly man is definitely dead.

So, why does he continue on to the care home anyway and then has a chat with the care home owner about the deceased man's habits, and also what will happen now he's dead (it's a care home so surely this can't be a new experience for them?).

As soon as the paramedic was informed the man was already dead why wouldn't he be immediately diverted to another emergency? Does anyone know?

Yes you make the arrangements once death is confirmed and doctor confirms no suspicious circumstances etc eg. Person had been ill

What if you don't call a funeral home? Youre just left with the body?

Depends on the circumstances. Hopefully if community care is involved these conversations will have happened. I have these
most days at work.
people age, weaken, plans are made. Diseases take hold and take those before we expect. I’ve attended homes where people have held vigil at a loved ones bedside for 36 hours and those where their loved one had had a documented DNR conversation and they woken beside them.
Or the ones who have needed intervention and their loved ones had gone to sleep next to them, finally comfortable, and they’ve gone in their loved ones sleep.

Yes it’s a 24 hour service. Usually only one or two hours wait for them to come.

@Kendodd you might contact your Inman or rabbi. Or your crematorium direct. Lots
of ways.

Unfortunately no one else is responsible for the body other than the next of kin, however difficult that may be.

Unfortunately call handlers don't know anything about the families wishes, needs, abilities and just have to go with standardised protocol. If it was an expected death, then 999 is not appropriate. They will throw everything at you that they have on their computer regardless. They cannot and should not ever make decisions about whether resus is appropriate. If it wasn't appropriate this should have been discussed and documented beforehand and so the nok know they don't have to call 999 in the first place.

Well yes you're left with the body in that case. You don't have to legally go through a funeral directors. You can arrange a funeral yourself. But legally a death has to be registered within 5 days and the body must be cremated or buried. You can arrange crem/buriel yourself or you can ask a funeral directors to do it.

I guess they run their services 24 hrs... have only ever had to call during office hours (my professional experiences are all in hospital so completely different, but have had to do this multiple times now with family). It does take some time for them to arrive quite often but personally I've found it quite helpful to have that time (gives you a bit of time to make a cup of tea, get used to the idea and maybe spend some quiet time with the person), but I'm sure that may not be the case for every family.

Guess he may have been doing it while waiting for a phone call back from the police/coroner and/or doing paperwork. There’s always loads of paperwork I’m sure.

Yes. When my dad died at home in his bed we didn’t ring anyone till the morning as it was quite late in the evening when it happened. So we just left him in bed and rang the funeral home in the morning.

Only until the undertaker comes
It used to be very common to have your dead relative at home for a couple of days before the funeral.
Nothing wrong with that

ken those black transit vans with 'private ambulance' are what funeral directors use to transport bodies to the funeral home.

Yes, we’ve had to do it twice. In my DM’s case though, because she hadn’t seen the usual GP in a certain period before she died (weekend locum) death cert had to go via coroner- even though she was 97 with advanced dementia. All thanks to Dr Shipman.

Lots of people choose not to ring them
straight away as they want more time with their loved on. This is fine.

not sure about uk. but where I am in forrin it's an offence not to have medical attendance promptly after a person's death.
usually police & ambulance/dr arrive together and either sign off a natural death or not.
deaths without attendence of medical proffessionals always go to a medical examiner who determines if an autopsy is needed.

A care worker was telling me recently about visiting a regular client who used to sleep with her face covered and would need waking and encouraging to eat/drink etc each visit.

She wasn’t told by anyone that the client had died, and had tried to waken her. She found it very upsetting. The client had been left alone waiting some hours for collection.

My dad died at home but it was expected, a nurse had been out earlier in the day and told us he probably had a few hours left to live.
When he then died I phoned 999 but stressed it wasn't an emergency and we didn't need an ambulance on blue lights. Call taker sent two nurses out, they declared dad deceased and stayed with us about half an hour. We phoned the Undertaker and they arrived within a couple of hours, they told us to go into a different room and have a cuppa while they did what was necessary. All very calm and civilised.

The programme will be heavily edited, I suspect the majority of the conversation will be about removing the body, coroner involvement etc but the paramedic wraps it up with nice words to reassure the manager who now needs to deal with the family, takes literally a minute or two but the film is edited well!

I have a relative who is an ambulance controller and says it is true to life.

Why would you not call a funeral home? What do you expect to happen? You can either ring them straight away, or wait for a while if you want some time alone with the deceased person.

I can't believe people don't know this stuff - and no, I've never called a funeral home in my life as my parents died in a rest home and a hospital and they called the funeral home on my behalf.

Did your MIL have a DNACPR form, and if she did, did your FIL tell the call handler? If not then they have to give basic life support information and send a blue light ambulance.

30 years ago when my mum died suddenly we called an ambulance. When they arrived we already had an off duty nurse (neighbour) tell us she was dead so the ambulance crew didn’t cross the threshold of our house. The off duty nurse stayed until the gp arrived and took over.

I can give a little insight, we lost my dad on NYE, passed at home where he wanted to be, in his own bed with me, my mum and my sibling all holding him and reassuring him.

He passed early hours of the morning, the hospice were involved in his care in the last few months and were very much on hand the last couple of days. We knew it death was imminent and a RESPECT form/DNR had been completed, they arranged a team of carers to come by who done some personal care and made him more comfortable.

After he passed we called the hospice again who came out as soon as someone was available as it was about 4am, they came about 8am and confirmed death. Weirdly time of death is recorded as that time, not the time we know he passed.

The hospice asked if we knew what funeral home we wanted to use (which we did), and I think another team of carers came out and dressed him for us at some point that morning.

2 people associated with the funeral home came out to collect him but I can't remember what time, it was quite a lot later that day I think, I know it was long enough that my mum got back into bed and cuddled dad while she tried to have a little nap. These 2 took inventory of the clothing and possessions he had with him and gave us a receipt for these, then transported him out of the house and into their van.

It then took a whole week before his body was properly released to the funeral home in terms of them being able to start embalming processes etc because someone needed to confirm cause of death before we could register the death, this is apparently normally much quicker because the person's GP or hospital/hospice doctors can sign off, but because my dad was cared for by the hospice nurses and never actually saw their doctors, and hadnt seen his own GP for a couple of years, his ENT doctor had to go out, view him and sign off.

Once that bit was done things started moving quite fast and the funeral directors could start their processes once we had registered the death. By this point we had already had our appointment with the funeral directors so they knew what we/dad wanted

Edit: we did call 101 when he passed as we were told to by the hospice, as they thought perhaps a duty doctor would be able to come out to pronounce, but the hospice nurse arrived before they did (I'm assuming the hospice updated the duty doctor as I don't remember them getting back in contact with us

Well unless you fancy burying them in the garden yourself then yes?
The funeral home is the next step.

I saw that episode last night too.

That paramedic fancied himself as a bit of a religious preacher, talked about how he considered leaving to be a minister full time. I do agree though that when the other main theme in the show was lengthy waits and queues outside A&E, that footage of him having a cuppa and a chat was jarring.