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?

I had an ambulance in 20-30 minutes in 2023 for my very young DC who was severely dehydrated with a sky high temp and lost consciousness.
I called an ambulance in Summer of 2024 for my DP who dropped suddenly with extreme chest pain, with pain in the left arm, couldn't speak and very typical heart attack symptoms. I was told it was an unknown time scale for an ambulance and to take him myself if possible. It was a collapsed lung but we didn't wait for an ambulance.

So I was surprised at the speed for my DC, having expected a long wait and them arriving quickly. And shocked that 12 months later calling with suspected heart attack and no help in sight. I live 20 minutes either way of 2 major non London hospitals.

Unfortunately, this is common where we live in the UK. Three years ago, we called an ambulance because my mum was struggling to get her breath and had an incredibly high temperature. They could hear her struggling to breathe on the call, but we were told it was a 1-2 hour wait. Nearly three hours later, and without any sign of an ambulance, she stopped breathing and my uncle had to start CPR. They did then get an ambulance to her within minutes, but it was too late and we lost her that morning!

then, on New Years morning two years ago, I woke up with my heart racing and jumping about. My husband called 999 and got a repeatedly message saying h they were receiving an unprecedented number of calls and our call would be answered soon. After five minutes of that he put me in the car and drove me to A&E, where it was absolute carriage, and there were a string aid ambulances queued up. We couldn't believe they couldn't even answer our 999 call! While it turned out not to be a life and death and situation (although did require emergency treatment, a stay in hospital and subsequent heart procedure), I am sure people died that night because their calls weren't even being picked up!

I had a hospital appointment a couple of weeks and as I drove past the A&E entrance to get to the car park, I noticed 4 or 5 ambulances waiting outside.

It struck me at the time that that would well mean people waiting longer for an ambulance. Then it struck me that even when they got one, they may well then have a long wait after arriving at the hospital.

I think the problem is where the ambulances get delayed, and I'm pretty confident that a massive factor is the time it takes them to unload at A&E. They're often queued up. The time it takes to unload at A&E is due to the demand versus capacity imbalance at A&E. The demand at A&E is increased due to local doctors and smaller hospitals not having capacity. The capacity in A&E is due to staff levels. This ought to be talked about more - eg every time we get a politician on the doorstep asking for a vote, as by the time we notice it, it can be too late. Solution = more money for staff at A&E + more money to bring smaller things back to the GP practices and smaller hospitals.

My 72 year old mum with breathing difficulties, COPD and countless other problems recently waited 17 hours for an ambulance.
and no, we couldnt do anything to take her; she is bedbound and extremely fragile. It takes equipment and people to get her out of the house. It was awful

It is all part of the vicious circle that the NHS is in.
Amongst other things we need a massive education programme to help people better understand what is and is not an emergency, and how to help themselves,.

It's not lack of staff it's lack of beds. Wards are full of mostly frail elderly due to flu season being particularly bad. Many people can't be discharged home because social care has fallen apart. Bed blocking is a real problem and we need to talk about the failure of social care - the NHS picks up the pieces because we cannot discharge someone unless they have somewhere safe to go to. No ward beds means people can't be moved out of ED or the acute admission unit, so ambulances physically cannot bring in new patients and end up stuck in the car park.

That also means elective surgery gets cancelled as no bed available post-op.

Population growth & particularly the increasing number of elderly people is a massive problem - we knew this was coming 20 years ago and politicians ignored it. They still are ignoring it with all the talk of 'analogue to digital' and 'more community based care' - makes no difference to someone with a limb fracture, or who is suddenly unable to walk, or as pre pp, has an acute severe asthma attack.

We need more paid carers, more care homes & for the NHS to be able to charge social services for hospital care once someone is fit for discharge but stuck in hospital waiting for a package of care or placement in residential/nursing home.

It's due to an ageing population. They'd rather force very frail elderly people with no quality of life to remain alive at all costs, to the detriment of the younger population. Makes sense.

The NHS is broken. We all know or have experienced poor and/or shocking delays or treatment. It’s inefficient and likely to get far worse until the AI takes over a lot of jobs including elements of home care. It’s an illusion to think help is now a call away. Most areas have very few ambulances. Here it’s 3 day time for large area and 2 at night. When there is delay at A&E they quickly get backed up.
Gone are the days a family GP would make a home visit for relatively minor ailments too. These days it’s a lottery and means too as GPs also say they are up against it (though many are part time and waiting room here always empty) means more of us will present with more serious life threatening conditions. Sad state of affairs and just sorry for what everyone going through.
Scrap Net Zero and sort out the Health Service.

I asked once on MN if ambulances have a way to prioritise patients, I know they do, and I thought age played a factor, but only based on my experience. I’ve had 2 elderly neighbours have a mini stroke at different times, one took herself to the hospital, the wait would have been 3 hours. The other fortunately lives with family that drive.

I have a baby that has had episodes of becoming unconscious and they have arrived within 20 mins. It is scary and I’m thankful for driving as we’ve needed the ambulance 3 times, but now that we know how to handle it, we drive if it ever happens to free up space for anyone else.

It’s so sad that we have to make these decisions.

Part of the problem can be the turnaround time at A&E, so you have ambulances waiting to unload previous patients and are not able to get back out there again. It’s very dependent on individual areas, hospitals, even, also dependent on time of day, and very much on time of year. So, for example, if you have a lot of elderly people being admitted with flu, A&E is overrun, they will not be able to admit patients and free the ambulances. I have no idea of the impact of doctors’ strike as that is recent and short term, but winter itself has a bit impact.

I dont drive, have 2 other kids under 5, live in a fairly rural location a fair way from hospital with no readily available taxi service, but that is also on a main route into a large town. It was morning rush hour where it could take 2 hours to drive. They didnt give me an eta for the ambulance.

Ambulance delays are not the fault of the ambulance services, they are due to delays offloading at ED and these delays are due to 'lodgers' in ED waiting for beds on the wards which are block by patients who are medically fit for discharge but without adequate social care in place in the community.

The social care issue is a societal issue, we as a nation need to decide how we tackle death and dying, and quantity of life over quality, we also need to decide as a nation how and how much we are going to fund social care. Then we need to pay social carers their worth and give them acceptable terms and conditions.

The ambulance service i work for would be massively overstaffed if the hospital delays were fixed overnight, which is a worry, but sadly not a big worry, because it's not going to happen any time soon.

the emergency services do a great job, the ambulance service are hampered in they cannot ' off load' the patients at A & E due to the lack of beds etc.

so many Dr's surgeries point people to A&E with minor injuries rather than seeing them.

The biggest issue IMHO that there are simply too many people living on this island for the infrastructure to cope. we can't keep building more houses/flats etc
without building more hospitals, the population in the uk increases daily, some days in nice weather by 500 a day.

26 hours for an elderly family member who’d had a fall last Christmas. To be fair she could have waited compared to other emergencies but she couldn’t go to the toilet and was lying in her own filth. For 26 hours.

What she could have done with was a district nurse - or even a trained carer - to come with incontinence pads and clean her up. She didn’t need paramedics but she needed a hoist and a stretcher and taking to hospital,

With an increasingly elderly population they need to start thinking of other ways than tying up paramedics and state of the art ambulances.

Mix of tory failure (they shut some of the older local ambulances in fav of fewer but larger hubs), staff not being replaced and many many ambulances sat outside hospitals with patients waiting to get into a bed.

It is a flippin scary time to be sick in the UK.

I know we wouldn't get an ambulance if we called even though we live 20 mins from a big Scottish hospital A&E and aren't rural. This is a main reason we kept our car as we don't really need it otherwise.

Someone I know had signs of sepsis. He was told the ambulance would take 6 hours so another friend drove him to hospital. He was triaged and admitted for treatment almost immediately. The friend was told by the doctor treating him that he’d have definitely died if he’d waited 6 hours.

When my baby stopped breathing the lives team ware at my house in under 2 mins, ambulance in 5 mins.

They need to do a public education campaign about when you should and shouldn't call for an ambulance. In France they do this kind of thing on national radio all the time.
If it's bad but not immediately life-threatening (meaning that you need paramedics) I think it's always going to make more sense for someone to drive the person to the hospital, if that's possible.
We have an ambulance station in our town, but due to a shortage of ambulances they have to cover a vast distance, so they're quite likely to be a couple of hours away when you call, with a list of people to see before they can fit you in.

Agree 100%.

If I have needed an ambulance and the wait is 1-2hours the ambulance service organised a taxi instead. My son was knocked over on the way to school. The school rang for an ambulance and it was a four hour wait. They took us to hospital in the school mini bus!!

Where I am ambulances are waiting hours to unload patients at A&E. If 4 ambulances are sitting outside hospitals for 5 hours with a patient onboard they aren’t able to respond to calls. My mum was on one for three hours recently after a fall that she couldn’t stand back up from she was triaged, given tea and the paramedics had some banter with her. A&E needs to be able to turn non urgent patients away so they have space for actual emergencies.apparently they can’t turn you away 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think some people end up phoning an ambulance because they cant get a GP appointment, same reason as why A&E is always packed to the rafters.
Another reason, and I will probably get an arse kicking for this, is many very elderly and frail people, often wracked with dementia, are being brought into hospital and shoved in a corridor for hours/days on end rather than being allowed to pass peacefully in their own home in their own bed.
I watched an episode of inside the Ambulance a while back where an elderly dementia ridden man had a cardiac arrest. They resuscitated him and got his heart going again, shovelled the poor guy into the ambulance and off they went. Treated him and shovelled him back home home for a few more weeks/months of misery.
Why, just why?