Been waiting 12hrs for an ambulance

[Riggsisadino]

I know it's all in the news but ambulance wait times are ridiculous and I know it's mainly due to people in a&e not being moved onto a ward and ambulances not being able to move into a&e.
I am currently with someone with a dislocated hip and shoulder and we gave been waiting 12hrs. The pain is getting unbearable and I am struggling to reassure and calm and know what to do. They are saying that they have people in same catogory waiting longer to.
I feel bad for the person I'm with but can't help to think people who aren't sat inside or are on there own. I don't know what the answer is but something neeeds to change

@kateandme
Same for mental health.which sadly I do think lack of funding and help IS due to people not caring or seeing these as important.or not understanding them enough.a go gets JUST two,two hours of training through our their whole education for some of these conditions. Some even less time. That's disgusting.
The wait for support is horrendous.and even then it's not adequate.

I could say a lot about mental health services as well - adult, older people and CAMHS. Some of the things I've heard in work, the calls I've taken...

And that was mostly pre-Covid. Things are worse now. It is horrendous.

A&E were fantastic, and were again 5 weeks later when suspected sepsis came knocking....I knew that time just to take dc.

I was just unaware at the time that A&E would have been my only option, I thought an out of hours GP may have been enough, but definitely learnt from that experience.

Sorry but the poster on the first page; please be careful moving someone with a broken hip, you can displace the fracture further which can be disabling and harder to treat. Hard though, not sure I could stomach someone being on the floor for hours and would want to move them.

Sorry don't mean op.

How have the dislocated hip and dislocated shoulder been diagnosed?

@Dillwyninthebath
Sorry but the poster on the first page; please be careful moving someone with a broken hip, you can displace the fracture further which can be disabling and harder to treat. Hard though, not sure I could stomach someone being on the floor for hours and would want to move them.

In all fairness to them they came across as knowing that. The stark reality of 12 years of austerity + Brexit + pandemic + f'd economy + tory leadership is that it really is the choice between 12+ hours waiting outside on the pavement at night vs risk of making the injury worse. 12+ hours lying outside in the cold with an injury could result in even worse complex injuries such as hypothermia and pressure injury.

I recently went to training to use assisted standing technology (fancy blow-up air bed/chair type things) and we had this conversation in detail. LOTS of us are having to make the judgement call whether to move somebody who might have/does have an injury, vs an extremely long wait for appropriate emergency assistance. That's why our town is making the choice to have assisted lifting tech available to anybody who needs it - whereas the right thing to do SHOULD be to call an ambulance for anybody who has had a fall, can't get up and/or is suspected of having an injury, it is worryingly not a possibility for, well anybody, now.

We're fucked. I can't believe how many people haven't realised this yet. There is no such thing as private emergency healthcare - even the rich can't just buy their way out of needing to use the fucked NHS in an emergency. You can't just sign up to BUPA and call a private ambulance and go to some mythical private A&E. You can get your planned hip replacement surgenry privately sure, but not emergency medicine.

my friend recently broke their ankle. called 999 and was told they couldn't send an ambulance. had to be taken by private car

You also risk severing the femoral artery.

Not to mention the risk to op themselves lifting a non weight bearing person from the floor is an accident waiting to happen.

“We're fucked. I can't believe how many people haven't realised this yet. There is no such thing as private emergency healthcare - even the rich can't just buy their way out of needing to use the fucked NHS in an emergency”

I agree with this and am amazed the situation we are currently in has been left unaddressed for so long. It literally could affect any of us at any time and we would be powerless to do anything about it. You wouldn’t treat an animal in the way that these people are being treated at their most vulnerable. Some of these stories are very hard to read.

I agree with all of the causes mentioned in the thread and also agree that this has been a ticking time bomb for many years now.

The problem is a total lack of long term planning by any party, and governments who prefer a quick fix, typically the plaster over a gaping wound.

To me there is no easy answer, and whoever is in government would struggle to fix it.

And now we have Sunak who will have his sights on the NHS as a source of savings.

The ambulance service is just so broken. The waiting time is horrendous. I work for the Police & were getting more & more involved with medical calls & its not the answer

We've had cops blue lighting people with serious bleeding. Gets them to hospital but they're getting basic first aid en route and then the police van is covered in blood & has to get put off the road to get cleaned

People are being put in the back of Police cars when ambulances don't turn up. It's only a matter of time before someone's injury is made significantly worse because they were moved.

Some of the calla we pass to them you'd think would be a priority. But they're not.

I'd hate to have to call one for a family member

Yes have a feeling this will be austerity on steroids! Very worrying indeed.

There's a lot of victim blaming on this thread. The long wait for an ambulance is because of an under funded and inadequate service, not because people are using ambulances inappropriately. The reality is that many people are suffering unavoidable pain, injury, and dying because of the inadequate service.
People are forced to use a and e because there are not enough minor injury and out of hours GP services. The last few times I have used 111 they have taken over 24 hours to call back, only to say no clinicians available go to a and e. These are for urgent problems such as a 2 year old with infected chicken pox during a bank holiday weekend. But easily dealt with without going to a and e. If not treated it can result in intensive care.
Also you don't know why someone is there. I had to take my baby after a seizure and by the time we had rang 111 and driven in he was recovered and ran round a and e for 3 hours. People probably wondered why we had brought him. But once you have declined an ambulance and said you will take your child you have to do it or they report you to social services. Plus having watched him go blue and stiff I kind of wanted him checking over.
A lot of these kind of things can be dealt with by a nurse at a walk in centre - but unfortunately the system is so broken that they are understaffed and often closed and the waiting times are ridiculous.
We're like frogs in boiling water - waiting hours for urgent medical care has become so normal that if you went to a and e and got seen in under 2 hours you would think it was really good service.

Completely disagree with this. Things were hugely better under the last labour government. I don't know why so many people believe this myth that the NHS has to be crap and the problems are not solvable. It's not a coincidence that the NHS has declined in line with years of austerity and cuts!

Surely the situation is bad enough to warrant the army stepping in to support the ambulance service...people waiting hours in agony like this is just appalling 😔

They’ve contracted St John Ambulance.

www.sja.org.uk/press-centre/press-releases/st-john-commissioned-as-the-nations-ambulance-auxiliary/

Wow didn't expect this many replies !
The ambulance arrived at 6 this morning. We got to hospital and where seen quite quickly for x ray. Shoulder was re located easily but hip will need to be done under anesthesia. They are currently waiting for a bed in a corridor in a&e atkeast one joint is back in though.
Thank you for those who showed concern.
There was no chance of moving them. It is hard enough to move someone with a dislocated shoulder hip makes it impossible and dangerous due to major vessels and damage that can be caused.

Hope they aren't waiting in the corridor long and they have been given some of the good stuff for their pain.

Very glad they finally got there safely OP. Hope they're a lot more comfortable soon

@SnackSizeRaisin
I totally agree!

Pleased to hear you got somewhere in the end !!

1000 excess deaths over the ONS norm per MONTH yet Brits sit and do nothing. They shrug. They say no one could do better. They say there's no credible opposition....it's pathetic

Yes it is scary when you live alone, with pets. Over the last 2 1/2 years I've had plenty of experience and it is not experience that I've had enjoyed or would wish on anyone else.

I now have four trusted neighbour to have keys to my property and the key safe on the door for emergency workers.

For the pets I've got those automatic dispensing things so make sure you're always fulfilled up with water and biscuits. Not ideal but far better than them dying of hunger or thirst.

@scaredoff germany and the us (not sure about France) require some payment at point of care. This serves dual function of generating revenue, but also more importantly decreasing demand. Even a nominal sum would encourage the ‘my cold hasn’t cleared in 5 days’ crowd to think twice before seeking care.

I am American, and I know the US system gets vilified here, but ironically stories from the UK are a big part of why your average American wants nothing to do with socialised healthcare. I am terrified of getting sick here. In the US a health emergency might cost me more personally, but I would get an ambulance in less than 15 mins, emergency treatment within the hour, and cancer screening within a week. My mom needed a knee replacement and was able to schedule it in at her convenience from 2 weeks in advance. She can see her gp same day, and was livid recently when a specialist referral was a 3 week wait for a non emergency assessment at a hospital of her choosing.