To think this was wrong?

[StressedD]

My friend was walking back from the library at uni last night (she'd gone in to finish some resit assignments and needed to use text books that were reference only). Around 11PM, she posted on fb that, while walking home, her left leg had started dragging and so she sat on a wall outside a shop for a few minutes, only she had been there 30 minutes and couldn't stand. When she still couldn't stand after an hour, she looked on 111 and followed the advice to call 999. We chatted on messenger while she waited for the ambulance to arrive. When it still hadn't turned up at 1.30 am, she called again and was assured the ambulance was on it's way. By this point I was getting worried about her, but I don't live anywhere near her, so couldn't do much to help. Friend told me that, there wasn't much I could do, the ambulance probably wouldn't be much longer, I should go to bed, and she'd let me know how things panned out. It turned out that she was found still sitting on the wall by university security at 2.45am and, when their control room couldn't get through to the ambulance service to get an estimate of how long it would be, they physically lifted her to her feet, put her in their van and rushed her to A&E (5 minutes from the shop she had been sat outside). Thankfully, all her tests showed that she hadn't had a stroke and she was sent home at around 7.30am. My friend keeps saying she was wrong to phone for an ambulance, and feels like a fraud.
I know Saturday nights are busy, but leaving someone who couldn't stand sat on a wall in the cold and rain for over 3 hours isn't right?

If you call a cab and can't stand, tough, they'll leave you there.

How could you know this?

Quite, aren't taxi drivers human being then? I don't think I've met one who would have left someone stranded in this situation, it's certainly not the norm.

@Namechangeforthiscancershit that fact that you were seen so quickly won’t have anything to do with where you went to hospital, it’ll have everything to do with the health professionals recognising you needed to be seen that quickly. If they believe you need to be seen right this second, that’s exactly what will happen, that’s how they save lives.

I hope all is well for you now

@Nicknacky the area she was in isn't exactly the nicest area. It took both security staff to get her on her feet, a taxi driver, if they did decide to get out of their car and walk to where she was wouldn't have been able to get her up.
The area she was sat in, wasn't covered by university security, they just saw her as they were passing from one campus to the next and stopped to ask if she was OK.

She might have been better off calling the police for help, easy to say in hindsight though.

Has her issue resolved itself, if the hospital sent her home without identifying the problem?

Did she phone a taxi and actually ask and explain her predicament? Or phone friends etc?

Or did she just assume ambulance would swoop her up?

No, which is lucky as travelling to my local hospital would negate the time saving

I put it down to moaning the nurse who triaged (?) me that I couldn't do mascara on one side...priorities! Anyway she took that seriously!

Thank you! So far so good, but I consider myself incredibly lucky when these things aren't picked up for some people.

The police wouldn’t help her. It’s a medical matter and they wouldn’t generally go out to this.

IME, the police would go to assist a vulnerable person in a situation like this. Obviously they couldn't treat her but they would go to make sure she was safe, if she was stranded in a dodgy area.

The police will not routinely go to this. It’s a medical matter and I see it on my screen frequently when calls are counted back to ambulance because ambulance have no ambulances available. We don’t go.

And yes, I’m a police officer.

Unfortunately this is what happens when services are stretched to breaking point.

The last couple of winters where I used to work, nurses would have to triage patients outside in ambulances queuing outside the hospital because it was so busy some people were waiting over an hour to be admitted on arrival in an ambulance. The staff would work tirelessly but there's not enough resources and not enough staff. It's horrific, and many people aren't aware of just how bad it can get.

I'm a nurse. This isn't uncommon. One of my colleagues recently had to wait nearly 4 hours after she fell and broke her hip, and was in agony unable to move. There just aren't enough ambulances and ambulance crew, and as a non-life threatening call her call would have kept being over-ridden by life-threatening calls (strokes, heart attacks, RTCs etc) meaning she would have been inevitably waiting a long time. I don't really understand why she didn't just call herself a taxi to get to A&E?

There's a thread on Mumsnet recently about people outside of the NHS having no idea how bad things are which you might find depressing illuminating on the current state of the NHS and ambulance service.

@marchez

I see your 90 minutes and raise you over 4 hours!
Seriously though I fell badly and broke my ankle in three places while walking the dog on the hills at the back of my house. I waited 4 hours for the ambulance ( obviously I was totally immobile) in the piddling rain ! I did appreciate that others needed the ambulance more urgently but I must confess by the time they came to rescue me I was frozen through, soaking wet and had never been to glad to see someone in my life.
Sadly cutbacks mean that help cannot always arrive as fast as we would like.

@Nicknacky my friend may well have tried to phone for a taxi. I don't know as I haven't heard from her since she got home and haven't been able to get through on the phone.
But to repeat: Both security staff had to lift her to her feet She didn't walk to their van once she was up, nor did she walk into A&E from their van. Last time I checked, taxi driver's don;t generally have a second person just in case they have to lift someone into a taxi.
She didn't assume the ambulance would "swoop her up", from my conversations with her, the only reason she phoned back was because she thought they might have tried calling her back and her overnight phone settings had blocked the call (she changed them to allow all calls). There is more to what happened, but my friend isn't sure whether what she heard being discussed by the security staff was assumptions on their part or had been passed to them by their control room. She did get a call from the ambulance service as she arrived at A&E, but I don't know what was said as she just put the facts in her message this morning.

As others have said. Breathing and conscious not a high priority.

I fell and broke my hip. We waited three hours on a Mac Donald's floor on a Saturday lunch time.

We did write and complain. And your friend should do the same. The demand for the service is higher than the they can stretch too. At some point people will die. The Nhs is broken.

Although I couldn't fault them once I was in hospital. I was in surgery three hours later and couldn't fault the staff throughout my time on the ward and follow up.

Hope your friend is quickly on the mend.

the area she was in isn't exactly the nicest

You sort of feel the ambulance service should be like the RAC and prioritise lone women, but obviously that"s not how it works and, while unfortunate for your friend, rightly so.

So you don’t really know what happened or what efforts she made but the ambulance service is at fault.

Gotcha.

Poor thing. It's a shame she didn't have anyone in same town / city she could have called to help her in this situation.

That's terrible, I hope she feels better today. It must have been very frightening. She had symptoms of a potential stroke and should have been taken by ambulance as an emergency. Sadly, our public services are under far too much pressure with years upon years of underfunding.

Munemea, somebody said ‘The clue is in 'accident and emergency' - she hadn't been in an accident, and this wasn't an emergency’. I’d say suddenly being unable to walk very well may be be an emergency, could be due to a number of serious conditions and certainly isn’t normal. As I said, she’d have been better off trying a taxi when the ambulance didn’t come, but she followed advice from 111. It’s bit as though she stubbed her tie and decided she needed an ambulance.

I know Saturday nights are busy, but leaving someone who couldn't stand sat on a wall in the cold and rain for over 3 hours isn't right? No, it isn't, but she was lucky the ambulance came this quickly. District nurse called ambulance for my DF in his late 90s, and it was 8 hours for ambulance to arrive. About 4hrs for neighbour in her 70s with broken hip.

...or rather, if it had come this quickly, she would have been lucky.

It’s awful that your friend had to wait so long but sadly it would seem the nhs is breaking down. My friends a nurse and she’s run off her feet. Staff aren’t replaced when they leave. It’s awful for staff trying to hold the fort and do their best. I’m proud we still have an nhs but I would like it to be a bit better. I’m not getting into politics, merely stating my wishes.

@Nicknacky I'm only relaying what my friend said in her message. Once I do manage to speak to her, I'll ask her, just for you, why she didn't call a taxi.
But I'm more interested in which area you live in that the taxi's have a driver and assistant so that, people who can't stand and walk can be lifted to their feet and carried to the taxi and then carried into A&E?
Because, I'm fairly sure that, unless the city she's in has changed in the last few weeks, there's only a driver in the taxi's there, so they can't do much if you can't stand and walk.

.

It's fucking awful and it makes me angry . It also makes me really sad how many people just accept that this is how it is. Of course she wasn't top priority, and you can hardly blame the ambulance crews, but the ambulance service should be funded well enough that no one (or at least very very few people) are left waiting this long.