Dying and the NHS

[TheAmusedQuail]

This week, my elderly neighbour (history of heart problems) needed an ambulance. His wife called 999 and they told him the wait was 5 hours. The operator advised him to go to the local GP surgery which is a 5 minute walk away (2 min drive).

He died in the waiting room. The horror of the lack of help available to us in emergencies is like that of an undeveloped country. Today, I read about a man having a heart attack in A&E in the UK. He was left, rolling on the floor in agony, turning blue in the face and frothing at the mouth, in front of his family.

I'm not young, although not yet elderly. I'm terrified that there will be no help available, given that I'm getting older. I know it isn't just my neighbour, or the man I read about, or me. It's all of us. But I'm very scared.

Omg this is horrific 😭

The whole system needs a total overhaul. It is not fit for purpose
And before everyone piles on, that does not mean an American model.
There is no political will for change because everyone is afraid to touch the sacred cow, but maybe we have to offer more basic treatment BUT do it WELL. 🤷‍♀️

It really is quite hair curling. Society as a whole is getting sicker as the long waits for anything are perpetuating the spiral of this. I hope that when my time is up I sleep away peacefully so I don’t need medical attention or assistance. My DH has been well warned not to keep me going for selfishness or I’ll come back and haunt the crap out of him!

Agree needs a total overhaul.

OP so sorry to hear about your neighbour 💖

The problem with ambulance waiting times has been getting worse and worse for years - compounded by the fact that they're often lined up outside A&E, unable to offload their patients! They literally waste hours and hours just waiting to be able to book patients in 😔 it's really worrying and I'm sure a lot of people are losing their lives due to unacceptable waits for medical attention.

If you have transport and can move the patient, I'd get them in the car and get to a&e. It's not always possible though.

Overhaul ?
we have one of the cheapest functioning health services in the world

to make it better we need to spend more on care homes and social care to avoid bed blocking , we need to eat better and make healthier choices the norm so there are less demands / it’s not rocket science

we need to do things. Pay more ( either tax the rich or add charges that affect the poor most )

we need to look after our health as a collective society not moan and wait for others to fix it for us. Diabetes and cancer treatments dominate the cost and they are strongly lifestyle influenced- if we could - and we could - cut the diabetes bill in half and the cancer bill by a third that would free up a lot of money to improve services all round.

100% agree

Maybe not to the outcome, but much more humane

I agree OP - I am really scared for what the future holds, especially in my elderly years (if I make it that far). Adding to be my worries is that fact that I have no family (only child, no children of my own) so I won't even have anyone to advocate for me in the broken system.

I am doing my best to look after my health. I do a lot of exercise and try to eat well, but it's all such a lottery.

I am very sorry to hear about your elderly neighbour.

Thing is everyone wants everyone else to pay for it. The highest rate tax payers are leaving the UK and the middle group are being squeezed. Welfare payments are going through the roof.

Personally I think we need a co payment system.

I’m in the same situation.

It’s always been very obvious to me that this is what the assisted dying bill is for. There is going to be an every increasing number of elderly people with no resources to care for them so the option will be to die.

I thin k ;part of the issue is the people who waste hospitals time - When I was in recently there was a woman there who kid has cold - another girl in her 20 who had fallen over and grazed her knee.
These people, should be fined for wasting NHS time

What were his symptoms? Waits are often too long, but chest pain is prioritised.

100%

Do you manage to stay positive about the situation? I don't. 😞

Just don't. No one's going to A&E for fun. Almost everyone there who shouldn't be has been let down elsewhere in the system. GPs are sending people to A&E as the only way to get them into the system for treatment.

My friends husband died in the waiting room of the GP 25/20 years ago

It needs a management overhaul. There are millions of pounds wasted in the nhs just through disorganisation and prioritising things that should not be prioritised.

an example of this is a recent five day trip for ‘apprentice’ week - showing management at fancy galas and dancing the night away, in their 4 star hotels.

making ambulance staff redundant and these people keeping their jobs.

i agree it needs overhaul and money spent in the right places.

I am sorry about your neighbour, and yes it is scary.

Anything heart related is towards top of the categories for priority to the point they will take crew off lower priority jobs 5 hours is a low priority job

sounds like he triaged as unwell rather than seriously ill then sadly declining rapidly

Very sad story. A GP surgery has a defibrillator, I guess that could have helped, so it wasn’t bad advice but moving to a car during a heart attack must have been agony and so terrifying.

My mum survived a fall, but was left lying on a cold hard floor in severe pain for over 5 hours. She went from being responsive to very unwell in that time. She wet herself and got even colder, her blood pressure crashed (luckily we had been able to get a blood pressure device to monitor her during the long wait). She was rushed blue lights to hospital in poor condition at that point.

We have an aging population, never going to be enough ambulances at moments of peak demand.

By the way everyone should know where there nearest defibrillator is - mine is at local school, but gates are locked out of hours so have to go further.

Sadly, older people are often terrible historians, and sick older people even worse. They were brought up with a stiff upper lip mentality. A person who is 80 would have been brought up by parents who didn't have the NHS as children, and the NHS would have been in its infancy when they were a child themselves, so they will often wait until they're very unwell before asking for help.

I think we need to look realistically at the treatment being offered.

My elderly DM is slowly dying with vascular dementia and kidney failure.

Looking back there were so many opportunities to let her go gently. Instead she has been kept going with medications, antibiotics. There have been hospital admissions and long stays. Where we are now is awful.

I am researching how I can make an advance directive for myself to decline all life sustaining treatment if/when I am diagnosed with dementia.