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

Genuinely think it’s more to do with the organisation of hospitals and the NHS . My mum is in her 80s and spent 5 weeks in hospital while they played around with different meds to try to get to the right ones that worked for her heart and kidneys. With a different approach to her care I don’t think she needed to be in hospital at all or maybe for a couple of days while they stabilised her.
our experience was
shes old anyway (in her 80s)
no one could tell my Dad and I what was happening
consultant rarely available, at best a doctor saw my mum for 5 mins a day
apart from when they first took her in she wasn’t critically ill or hooked up to anything, all that time in hospital we are lucky she didn’t catch something worse, as it was her legs ballooned up due to inactivity. Hospital care is all over the place.

The average wait in my local area for home care is 12 weeks plus

Tell me again how young people paying private health care insurance is fixing that?

@topgub MIL has home care once a day. She has parkinsons and is 86 although still quite well. It was precipitated by a couple of episodes in lockdown when things went slightly wrong and she went to the police station because of a few daft things and they contacted SS. We live 100s of miles away.

The carer goes in at lunchtime, makes sure everything is OK and helps her with lunch. It took DH no more than 4/5 calls to get it organised. We pay for it. She has never been assessed. Without that one hour a day, I am sure she would have deteriorated significantly by now.

No family to help.

Funny isn't it how a member of Joe Public can get things sorted swiftly yet the NHS can't.

Glad for you and your MIL, but I’ve been trying to arrange similar private care for my Mum for months and companies either don’t reply, are shutting down or say they have no availability.

Im not speaking about someone with dementia who may be physically aggressive and run off in the middle of the night. There are plenty of elderly people who need help daily and dont have dementia. You can adapt your life to care, hoists exist, making a house more accessible is a thing, caring for one another is possible! The government need to promote a more cohesive family unit and help to allow care at home WITH family.

Some cultures ARE better at looking after the elderly. When older people get to a certain stage where they’re independent but need supervision daily to make sure they’re okay living separately doesn't work. The large house falls into disrepair, they themselves can fall and cause further harm+need for carers.

The english culture to send parents straight to a home or living alone at the age of 90+ needs to change, yes there are circumstances and situations that warrant this but it happens too often leaving them vulnerable to the NHS and social care which is at breaking point.

If your mum just needs one carer and only for 60mins to assist in making lunch or running the hoover round, then she isn't the issue for the NHS... she is requiring social care only.

Try getting 4 x 45min 2 up, for a patient with dementia, severe parkinsons etc who needs significant aids and rebuilding work done to make the house safe and enable independent living?

You re not comparing like for like at all.... so no.... not joe public showing us all how crap the NHS is.

@RosesAndHellebores

Unfortunately the vast majority of 'Joe public' are either unwilling or unable to pay for private care. Especially when care needs far exceed 1 hour a day.

Its also impossible to pay (privately or other wise) for a service that doesn't exist.

Finding a private carer to make lunch for another wise well older lady is easy.

Finding carers to provide personal care for an aggressive, doubly incontinent older person with other complex care needs, not so much.

I mean, do you honestly sit there and smugly think that the nhs has easy solutions to a social care crisis that Joe public could fix in a few days but just doesn't bother?

Your comments are laughable at best.

@BerryTiredMama

What care experience do you have? How many elderly relatives have you cared for?

I don't think you have a scooby clue what is involved, let alone looked after anyone as they age.... hoists? ffs ... anyone needed one of those will be bed ridden, double incontinent, help with all meals.. washing, turning, meds.

Then there is the age of the carers themselves, who may well be in their 60s by the time their parents need help... if younger, they'll need to give up work and move back home... how do they afford that?

Social Care is at breaking point, no its actually broken because of privatisation, very low wages and our attitude to carers... i ve often read on MN that Angela Rayner is thick and to prove the point will then say "she was a carer... say no more"

Hear Hear @Topgub

@Topgub my father who was terminally ill and passed away last year. Look above, why do elderly relatives live hundreds of miles away from any family? 86 with Parkinson's and living alone?!

Don’t misunderstand me, Caring for someone who is very ill is not something that can be done alone by one person, this is why larger family units work. Multiple kids and parents looking after one another. There needs to be a shift in mindset about looking out for one another.

As i said before homes work in certain situations but far too often the elderly are left alone to fend for themselves.

@BerryTiredMama

As much as I agree that too often people expect the nhs/state to solve their problems I also understand the reality of providing care.

Its not reasonable to expect people to never move away or to give up their jobs or other family life.

Especially as care disproportionately falls to women. All that would happen is that it would be another burden for women, pushing even more out of work

There's a vast difference between supporting a fairly well older person and actually caring for someone. It's backbreaking and mentally exhausting.

If you managed it single handedly over a number of years, then that's quite a feat.

But most won't and I think that's fair enough.

however

We cant then moan that we're not getting the service we want. We absolutely can't expect the nhs to provide immediate, free at point of use, gold standard health care and all elderly and social care for the amount of funding it currently gets.

Or for the wages it currently pays.

Its absolute madness to think it can or should.

It also filters down. I called 111 the other day . They said i would need to see a clinician in 30 minutes or they would transfer me to 999 service. Ambulance called and asked if i could take ds to hospital as it was a 4-6 hour weight currently. I cancelled the Ambulance.. 111 didn't call back and suggest that rather than blocking an ambulance that i didn't need

@Topgub yes I understand where you’re coming from, i dont mean to say it is for the family alone to take all responsibility but there needs to be a mix of care and safety netting for a older vulnerable people.

An older person can be fairly well and quickly deteriorate, having younger more able bodies around means they’re more likely to be care for in time and appropriately than living alone.

When i was younger by grandfather who had a stroke lived with us, we all took responsibility for care, it was difficult but because it was a shared responsibility alongside carers coming in (not round the clock care) it worked.

Its a complex situation that cant be fixed by one magic wand but families do need to be more involved.

My** grandfather - lots of mistakes!! Anyway I really hope this horrendous situation is sorted soon!! And the OP got an ambulance in the end. Im signing off this post as i think people will continue to hound me 😝

This is what is needed, a radical reform with some level of payment. It works fine in many countries. However it would be a brave government who tried to undertake such a reform.

@BerryTiredMama with all due respect we'd have MIL close by in a heartbeat. We have an annex she could move straight into. She and FIL moved into their home in 1959. Wild horses wouldn’t drag her out of it and we will facilitate care there, where she wants it.

The point that has been missed is that one hour a day has helped her immeasurably and I am certain that by now, two years on, she would need significantly more care had it not been put in place. And yes we will pay for more and more complex care when the time comes, in her own home for as long as it takes.

When she was 21, she went where the work was. 100s of miles from family. When DH was 21 he went where the work was.

People have moved away from family to get work or because of house prices. While London social housing has wait lists of 10 years plus and private rents that are unaffordable, plus councils actively encourage people to move further away (which is applauded by many posters) the inevitable consequence is that the people driven away by cost of living won't be available to be unpaid family carers...

Also, when a household could survive on one salary, the SAHP would (hopefully) transition from looking after babies to looking after her grandparents/partner's grand parents or end up juggling both, leaving the single earner free to earn.

Now both parents are simultaneously expected to work full time and care for aging relatives, move away to find work but remain a close knit family focussed on elderly care. It's another part of you can't have it all.

We do have a ground floor annex which would be relatively easy to make fully accessible, however we've moved for employment reasons to the opposite end of the country - and given how well NHS care transfers around the country it would be a tough decision for aging parents to move up here...

It’s not the NHS that needs more funding, it’s social services, in our trust, in my small 60 bedded hospital probably 80% are waiting for care packages or care homes.

@randomsabreuse I note the "her" in your post. All women should be empowered to earn what their partner earns.

I am working at 60+ in a career role, as is DH. Both paying tax. Our grandparents, male and female worked beyond retirement age. Our parents, mothers and fathers, worked until their late 50s/early 60s. All paying tax. Bevan and Attlee promised health services from cradle to grave. We were sold a pup from day one.

My family have choices - no generation preferred to stay at home - then again no generation received a penny from the state. Except poor grannie - five years in a geriatric mh nursing home with advanced alzheimers. She was 4 stone when she died. Mother and grandpa visited daily and provided additional care for the last five years. The first five when she was at home were horrendous. The only reason she lasted 10 years was because there were no underlying clinical conditions and she was so well cared for at every turn.

It's a very complicated subject. My FIL is 83 , reasonably fit and well and 'all there' - we would prefer him to move into an over55 apartment development reasonably close to us- very nice it is too - he is reluctant as although he acknowledges he should he still likes having plenty of space and an office etc in his good sized3 bed chalet house and likes knowing a few neighbours etc- even though it's a bit of a grim area with no facilities- the minute he can't drive he's going to be stuck!!

Agree. I'm not physically or financially capable of looking after elderly relatives; it would break me physically and I'd be bankrupt/impoverished in no time. And my husband is twice my size; no way I could lift him if he needed help!

There is a difference between nursing and care homes, and their registration conditions are different. And their fees are of course clearly different.
The question of the threshold is a very complicated one and it often depends on the personal whim of staff on the ground. There is a formal assessment procedure for those applying for CCF (where the NHS pays for the care at home or in a nursing home) but otherwise the homes assess people and make a decision as to whether they can meet their care needs, from which you can conclude if nursing care is needed. Many care homes hang on to people who might be regarded as needing nursing care and district nurses call in. It is all remarkably vague.

Nursing home places are hard to get - full stop. They are all privately owned, but under some conditions residents can have some of the fee paid by the local authority (or NHS as explained above). If the LA is paying, then the resident makes a contribution (all of their pensions, attendance allowance etc.); if the NHS is paying then they don't.

I sold my home to get my OH into a halfway decent nursing home, even at the point where LA funding help kicked in - it nowhere near covered the fees and I had to "top up" as the jargon goes - in fact I was paying the bulk of it.

To the OP I would say: the decision for my OH to go into a NH was not taken lightly. I was wholly unable to manage him both physically and mentally - he thought I was trying to poison him. I did not abandon him - I was with him for hours each day, feeding him and helping with his care as best I could. All the family visited all the time. Your utopia of extended families caring for the sick and elderly is a pipe-dream. Families are so scattered that it just doesn't work.

For me it was all a tragedy and took a massive toll on my well-being.

Major injury after what must have been major trauma and yet no other ailments.