Surprised by not being able to get ambulance

[FrenchFancie]

This is in no way to have a dig at the ambulance service or at the hospitals (but maybe slightly at the junior doctors strike) but I have been really surprised recently when, for the first time in aaages, I have had to call 999 twice, and on both occasions wasn’t able to get an ambulance.

firstly my daughter was having an asthma attack, and not responding to medication. After 10 reliever puffs we called, and were told it would be a 1-2 hour wait. So we stuffed her in the back of the car and drove like idiots to the local hospital instead, where she was seen straight away. But it was a scary midnight drive. Her asthma plan states to ring 999 after 10 puffs and the ambulance should attend within 10 minutes.

second was through work where a child was having an epileptic seizure and again, we were told it was an unknown wait time, possibly 1-2 hours.

both of these things I felt really scared about, wanting urgent professional help and support, but it wasn’t available. I know I’m not going to get an ambulance for an adult with broken ankle, but kids with quick onset, possibly life threatening conditions, I was shocked there was nothing available.

is this the same now everywhere? It’s been years since I had to call 999 (like 10 years) and got a quick response last time (daughter fell off changing table, was in London and overreacted to her banging her head but the crew were lovely).

I don’t blame the ambulance service or 999 operators - in fact on both occasions the operator sounded stressed and upset they couldn’t get me help.

what, if anything, can be done about this situation?

We have a voluntary first responder service who tend to arrive before the ambulance service. They are trained in first aid, but not to the level of paramedics. It is reassuring to have them doing their thing whilst waiting.

If your daughter has had several hospital visits, might it be worth talking to your GP about having a nebuliser at home? It is a more effective way of getting the salbutamol and it's probably what they put her on when she arrives at A&E.

Rural Wiltshire. Dad fell in the garden in September and couldn’t get up. Waited 11 hours for the ambulance. Was after midnight when they arrived.

Over an hour in Glasgow for an ambulance for a heart attack

the suggestion was to make own way to hospital but it just wasn’t feasible

it was the most frighted I’ve ever been in my life

Totally this. My DM ( who lives with me) fell on Thursday morning, said she felt ‘funny’ and cut her wrist quite badly- she’s on blood thinners so any sort of cut is a bit of a disaster. I patched her up best I could then rang her community heart failure nurse as instructed because we’re supposed to let them know if her symptoms change. Heart nurse said there was nothing she could do, suggested the GP. So I called surgery and asked if a nurse could take a look and dress it properly. Nurse was off sick, surgery suggested we went to a&e. Wasn’t taking her there to be exposed to all the bugs floating around, her cut had finally stopped bleeding so I’ve just been keeping it clean and dressed. DM has already had rsv that became pneumonia in the last six months so I’m trying so hard to shield her but it’s so hard when the overstretched community services keep sending people to a&e

Our town had a fully operational A&E until it was downgraded to an "urgent care" centre in 2007.
Now its a 10 mile journey for emergency care.
You can thank Blair and his cronies for that one

The ageing population is a huge part of the problem or rather the lack of planning for it.

Fire service don't just deal with fires though, it's fire and rescue. I work in fire control and I'd say on an average day maybe 40-50% of my calls and deployments are to actual fires or potential fires. The rest are rescuing people in water or trapped at height, assisting ambulance service with getting into properties to check on patients or extricating bariatric patients or patients in difficult to navigate properties (this is really common), traffic collisions, chemical incidents, flooding, and recently we've had a lot of babies being locked in cars for some reason.

That said we're definitely better off than police and ambulance in terms of staffing. It's very rare that we have to queue engines because we don't have enough to go around.

Thank you!
(I love the breadth of first hand knowledge and expertise on Mumsnet.)

@ladyamy and the ambulance went ?? If so that's why NHS on knees calling and getting a service are surely two different things ?

Op same down south lad knocked off his motorbike and people giving warm clothing as he was left on ground for ages

People don't realise how bad the NHS is really

In fact last year wasn't there some awful thread about an elderly lady with something nasty broken left for hours ?

We are in Edinburgh, my 94 year old nan had to wait over 12 hours for an ambulance when she fell and broke her hip at home last week. We couldn’t move her without her howling in pain.

It’s extremely worrying hearing these stories, something really has to be done.

When i was waiting in an ambulance queue for over an hour outside A&E they explained that they couldn't accept us into A&E because they couldn't process patients through the system fast enough. This was blocking the ambulances from responding to other urgent calls...so yes..i think the junior doctors do bear some responsibility. No time is ever good to withhold medical care deliberately.

@Evilwitchwhoroams hospitals are better staffed during doctor strikes. More doctors all of whom are consultants. The issue is getting patients out and that's down to a lack of social care.

Where I live my 84 year old mum fell in freezing cold weather she had broken her shoulder and hip the ambulance took 7 hours to arrive we couldn’t move her as she was in agony , so we tried to cover her up to stop her getting cold , when I complained I was told tough if your not happy we can cancel the ambulance this snotty woman said to me if she had been in the same room I would have been done fir assault, no compassion at all

We live rural, with the closest hospital being 60miles away. My daughter needs frequent ambulances, sometimes it’s a few minutes if there’s one at the station, but if in the likely event the local ambulances are half way down the road taking someone to hospital it can be hours. Really scary considering if im phoning an ambulance she is unconscious.

It’s too easy to blame the general public, the system just needs sorting out.

I had to wait over 2 hours when I had a heart attack- there was a shooting in my local area & they said all ambulances had diverted there… they kept phoning me every 15 mins (to check if I was still alive 🤣)… in the end my daughter drove me to A&E & I was ok- I think it’s countrywide now tbh

You're very lucky. My son is type one diabetic and was in DKA and started having seizures. 999 ambulance was phoned, asked if he was breathing and then stated emergency ambulance would be a 4 hour wait minimum. We managed to get him in the car and drove 6 miles to the nearest hospital. Eventually got seen and then he spent 30 hours on a trolley in a corridor along with dozens of others and their relatives. Very stressful for all. Meanwhile the nursing staff were standing around laughing and chatting and looking at their phones... 😲

We called 111 last year as I passed out in the bathroom, they told us to call an ambulance which took two hours to arrive me. They assessed me and said I needed to go to hospital but that it would be quicker if I took myself as I could go straight to A&E without joining the queue of ambulances outside.

I wasn't seen for 10 hours, there was a man there with heart problems who had blue lips and had been there for three hours when we arrived. There were people with superficial stab wounds who were seen within a couple of hours.
The A&E staff were mostly busy dealing with young drunken east european girls who had passed out there, and told me that most of the local ambulances were stacked up outside waiting to offload patients.

Yes, we had a lot of the nursing staff chatting on phones nonsense too.

Thats terrible as I said my son was diagnosed in DKA i can't fault the NHS for his treatment the ambulance arrived in minutes and blue lighted him to hospital, straight through to resus he was in critical care within an hour .

I disagree. Ive called four times in the last year for my elderly neighbour and each time it was here in less than 15 minutes .

I remember walking in to a REAP 5 day once and wishing I could turn around and go straight home. Not for the faint of heart those jobs!

This would be a call handler error and not standard advice - the guidance is to recommend aspirin for chest pain / heart attack symptoms, but contraindicated if there are any stroke symptoms.

If anyone is told to take aspirin when calling for a possible stroke, please contact the service and let them know so they can issue a reminder to call handling staff or organise retraining.

Discuss with the asthma nurse whether your daughter should have a nebuliser she can use in these kinds of emergency. Most of the time the advice is no but worth checking.

Talk through what the plan should be when the ambulance service isn't working like a first world ambulance service.

Consider one of the first aid courses aimed at people doing mountaineering or travel in remote areas abroad. Learning how to splint bones enough so you can move somebody to a car seems worth doing in the current climate.

Think about how the seats lie down when you next buy a car - could somebody lie flat in the back of it if essential.