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

Loads of EU nationals. When my DM was in hospital pre Brexit almost all the staff were Spanish.

If even a few went home the hospital would have been struggling.

Where I live everything being built is targeted at the elderly population. Two large pubs and a car dealership site in about 5 or 6 miles all demolished and elderly housing being built.

each time planning is granted for a site you hear people saying “why more elderly accommodation, what about the youngsters”

It is the NHS, but the real problem is chronically underfunded social care, there is nowhere to discharge patients too if they can’t go home.

So sorry to hear about this. Blame the Tories! They have been underfunding the NHS since they got in 12 years ago. They don't care if people die waiting for ambulances. Give your friend painkillers. I'd call 111 too. I hope that all is OK.

YANBU.
absolutely not a medical professional but from general knowledge I would be extremely concerned about patient losing feeling in their hand with a dislocated shoulder. Could indicate damage to nerves

It's just shocking how bad things are, my mum waited 7 hours for an ambulance with oxygen levels of 65. She died 3 days later, the hospital were amazing but our NHS needs some serious help.

And because of dickheads who lie saying symptoms are worse (they know the key words to say to get the ambulance on a cat1) just so they get seen quickly!! Makes me f’ing mad. That’s one of the reasons why people who need one can’t get one….

@Untitledsquatboulder Scotland.

Sheltered housing where I’m from has all been sold off and sites turned into flats - but they were owned by the church so maybe that’s why?

There are some private retirement flat complexes but they are for people to buy, not rent and lots don’t seem to have the same communal facilities/ activities and 24hour wardens.

My 76 year old mum had a stroke 2 weeks ago, I called for an ambulance and was told it was an 8 hour wait. I got her into hospital where she spent 51 hours sitting in a chair in the corridor. When she was finally admitted to the cardiac ward (all male), she spent the next 6 nights with a psychiatric patient who screamed and cried solidly for 2 days and a prisoner with 2 guards with him 24/7. I don't know how she coped. On the plus side, they eventually fitted her with a pacemaker which will give her a new lease of life. All free but what a cost to get there.

It’s shocking. A neighbour of ours in his early 60s fell ill suddenly with agonising pain in his head and neck, as in completely out of the blue debilitating pain and collapsed. His wife rang 999 and they told her he wasn’t a priority and to take him to hospital herself. She was, obviously, distraught and in no fit state to drive really. He came to and they put him in their car and got to A&E where he was left to wait for hours. Eventually he was triaged and sent back out to wait still in agony with pain in his neck. A junior doctor spotted him in the waiting room and said something wasn’t right and called him over. They examined him, did some tests and found something really serious (I can’t remember the name of it now). Within minutes he was being transferred to a specialist hospital somewhere in London and hours later was undergoing emergency open heart surgery. The odds were so low, something like 80% of people die before receiving the operation and 90% die during the operation. The ambulance dispatcher didn’t log it as a category 1 cardiac incident because the pain was in his neck, not his chest. He was left for hours in an A&E waiting room and almost died because there was nobody free to see him. Thankfully he was treated in time and has since gone on to recover, but he has totally lost the quality of life he had before.

When the system works, the NHS is phenomenal and the staff on the ground do such a good job in impossible circumstances. But it’s broken and people are suffering.

Another sorry tale to add from a few weeks ago.

Elderly Mum in her 90s with advanced altheimers fell & hurt her shoulder (later transpired it was fractured). Called ambulance, chased up after 3 hour wait to be told it would be several more hours. Decided to drive her instead. Phoned 111 on route who told us the hospital were expecting her. Turned out it made no difference and we joined the same a&e queue as everyone else.

We spent a total of 10 hours in a&e with a frightened, confused old lady in pain (sure we jumped the queue a bit because of this as others seemed to be waiting even longer!). During this time we saw multiple doctors and nurses who asked the same questions and did the same checks before disappearing never to be seen again. It was just a way to move people along - very inefficient and badly organised but not the fault of the staff who were very stressed and running round like headless chickens!

She was finally admitted and had surgery the next morning. She was in hospital 2 weeks. She didn't need to be taking up a bed for two weeks. Realistically she could've come home after 3 or 4 days. The reason she was in there so long is because everything moved so slowly due to lack of staff and no doctors available to sign her off. When she came out she had regressed massively. She had forgotten how to use the toilet as they left her with a pad on and had almost forgotten how to walk due to being confined to the bed. She also lost loads of weight. We fear she'll never be the same again.

It was a horrible experience for all concerned and depressing to see how bad things have got in the NHS. A paramedic we know told us afterwards that, even if we'd got the ambulance, they would've delivered her to the same queue.

I watched a fantastic talk about how Margaret Thatcher asked someone to look into how to privatise and or replace the NHS and since Government after Government (Labour as well as Conservatives) have put this plan into action. They hark on about loving the NHS and make a big song and dance about it but know that if they came out and said what they wanted to do the public would go mad so tbeg just have sold bits off slowly and surely and reduced funding more and more and more, with deliberate intent.

What you are seeing and experiencing is the NHS in its dying throws. We’ve been utterly fucked, lied to, and played for fools.

Sunak isn’t going to save the NHS. He will nail the coffin shut.

That's shocking.
Something has to be done with these extremely frail patients..Patching them up, mending fractures, only for them to significantly deteriorate in other ways, muscle loss, becoming incontinent..
It's usually incontinence that makes family fling up hands in horror and start looking for a 'home.'

I do wonder if Euthanasia would be kinder, and if we can elect for it ourselves when well enough?
EG ''If I become bed bound and demented, unable to use lavatory independently, and it's only going to get worse..Euthanasia.

So many people are terrified of losing their 'Dignity' {Toileting issues}..I know I'd prefer Euthanasia to being wretched in a care home, unable to recognise family, and being like a baby again.

The NHS has been systematically starved of funding by every Tory government bar none.

It's on its last legs, better get prepared for USA style insurance premiums...

Thanks Tory voters, killed off probably the best thing any GB government has ever put in place and that was thanks to Labour.

Social care is the responsibility of families over the NHS and care workers. People need to understand that older parents need to be looked after by living together and caring for each other. Larger families living together, working together helping one another…. Thats what needs to happen to fix the problem of an ageing population.

and yes expect an American style system because the english dont know how to revolt. If this was France with three prime ministers in 3 months people would be out in the streets screaming for a general election. Knowing what the tories have done and standing by, can’t complain can we.

Social care is the responsibility of families over the NHS and care workers. People need to understand that older parents need to be looked after by living together and caring for each other. Larger families living together, working together helping one another…. That's what needs to happen to fix the problem of an ageing population.

Well that's bit pie in the sky! I could no more have looked after my poor sick husband in the years before he died than fly! Couldn't lift him for a start off.

Can you imagine people realistically caring for very old and dementing parents?
Sadly that isn't going to happen.

A nurse said ''People are living so much longer nowadays, and it isn't increasing quality of life''
Grinding on into one's Nineties, if one is not able to care for oneself is just no fun.
Some cultures are better at looking after elderly, but people I personally have known who cared for older parents had to give up work to do so..

Dementia is frightening, especially where there is aggression.

I witnessed a local person go from friendly and mild mannered to aggressive, and her immediate neighbours said it was extremely distressing to hear the poor woman be screaming at invisible adversaries through the wall all night long.

I saw her one baking hot day, dressed in about 10 cardigans and jumpers, she had locked herself out, and was banging on car windows and the windows of her own home, demanding to be let in.

I tried to approach her, but she was aggressive and saying ''I don't know you! stay away!''..We did manage to get her adult 'child' to come over, but the whole thing was very alarming,
To see how a personality could change so radically.

@alanabennett
my friend recently broke their ankle. called 999 and was told they couldn't send an ambulance. had to be taken by private car
I should bloody hope so! Call a friend with a car or a taxi. Using an ambulance for a broken ankle is an outrageous waste of resources.

When I broke and dislocated my ankle (10 years ago) I landed so my foot was wrapped around my other leg, and I looked like I had another joint in my leg. It took gas and air and experienced paramedics to untangle me and get me onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. On ice, too. I just can't see how my friends would have got me around a corner, through a garden gate and down a driveway on ice then into a car to drive to A&E. Perhaps you think my injury wasn't a usual broken ankle or perhaps you still think that was an outrageous waste of resources. 999 were happy to send an ambulance, and apologised that there would be a wait of up to an hour. They were with us within 45 minutes, the rest of it was all a bit of a blur but by 12 hours time I had had my dislocation put back in, and was on a ward where it turned out I would stay for 2 weeks over Christmas waiting for the swelling to go down enough for them to operate to put metalwork in there. It absolutely fucking terrifies me that if that happened in 2022 we would somehow have to scrape that person up and get them into a car without injuring them further (I'm a first aider and trained in manual handling of people for my job and frankly I think would be next to impossible) to get to A&E, where they would most likely wait 12+ hours to be admitted, and I strongly suspect they would be sent home to wait over 2 weeks for the surgery (that would have been done the next day if the injury hadn't swollen up so much).

Agreed...It took three of us to physically lift and handle our poorly relative {they were probably just 10 stones at this stage} but they had lost the use of their legs, and couldn't support own weight.

It needs two people to support a bedridden person, and lots of daily routine care so they don't get pressure sores.

My waters broke pre-term and we were 2 hours away from our booking in hospital. They advised us to go to our (awful, awful) nearest hospital and we reluctantly did. They refused to allow us to maternity until a doctor had confirmed my waters had definitely broken. After two hours we were triaged and told that we wouldn't be allowed to go to maternity because our pregnancy wasn't viable (they didn't examine me at all) and it'd be a six hour wait to see an A&E doctor. We upped and left to our booking in hospital instead, took us an hour and a half to get there in the middle of the night but we were seen in maternity straight away. My "non-viable pregnancy" is now 12 weeks old and asleep next to me.

@Mischance where does the threshold for social care end and for clinical care start?

Are the privately funded nursing home places as hard to get as the publicly funded ones. There used to be a difference between nursing homes and care homes. Is there still?

@GreatLates I hope you complained. Congrats on your baby.

@Mischance If the government hadn't expected people to "get on their bikes" for jobs further away, people would live closer to their families.

If people could still afford to live where they grew up you'd have more multi-generational living with more support, but as housing shortages mean people are forced away to get any kind of home, you're going to need more non-family care.

@RosesAndHellebores Some settings are mixed, so can offer nursing care and residential care, some are purely residential, the criteria for funding for a nursing bed is quite complex and the bar has been moving higher as the number of people needing care of any sort has increased.
Generally speaking and I am sure a lot varies depending on area, if you are self funding, so have the money to pay £1500-2000 a week for a bed, you will probably be able to find one quite easily and move in quickly.
The issue isn't neccessarily the volume of beds available in the private sector, it is the time it takes for an assessment to be done and funding put in place if you are not able to self fund.
Another big issue is finding domiciliary carers if someone wants to live in their own home with support. Rural areas seem to struggle more than urban ones, for obvious reasons such as increases in fuel costs and mileage rates not being kept in line with fuel prices, staff not being paid for travel time.

@RosesAndHellebores We recently met a HR head of a major NHS trust, he said Brexit decimated the workforce in London... less so in the regions.

Your experience may of course be different but mine is not....neither is it on the ground either.

@BirmaBrite It is taking approx 6 weeks to get a 2 up care package regardless of location.
Again, elderly folk i know have lost carers to hospitality and retail for the reasons you give... and some EU ones went back home.