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

I am not sure how the Government can sort out domiciliary care, given that most of it is in the private sector now.
They have cut funding to local Government so LA step down/respite beds have been closed, a 30 bedded facility near me was closed prior to the pandemic. Granted it wasn't as pretty or as posh as the private places, but it provided much needed capacity for short term placements, and allowed people to recover and be rehabilitated in safety.

I agree

The writing has been on the wall for years about looming crisis in social care

If carers received a decent wage, then more people would apply, social care would be available, people would be discharged from hospital, hospital beds would be freed up, sick / injured patients could be treated more quickly. None of this is rocket science

I can't help thinking that it's not coincidence that carers are predominantly female, and this is a factor in the wages being low

From what I’ve experienced recently, ambulances are tied up waiting outside A&E for hours. My mother was waiting on the ambulance for six hours before being let into A&E. It’s no wonder there’s none available to answer calls.

And then once in A&E it was 60 hours before they could find a bed for her. During one night of that stay she was the only female patient in bay with three men, two of whom were violent.

That’s dreadful, it’s hardly as though you can take them yourself is it. Also, I doubt you’ll be seen much quicker when you get there. My DH occasionally has to call an ambulance when I get a bad flare up of my medical condition. Last time was about 18 months ago. We waited 4 hours and then 12 hours in casualty. My colleague who’s a paramedic was waiting in a queue of ambulances outside her trust from the start of her shift at 8pm (i think) until 5am!! Disgraceful.

Last time I needed an ambulance, they advised me it would be a several hour wait. Likely up to 12 hours.

They asked if I would accept a paid taxi which would have been extremely uncomfortable.

I accepted it out of desperation and had to wait 2 hours for that as he was coming from Sheffield. I’m from lincolnshire!!

It would have cost the NHS, £170 in total. (That’s what the total said on the taxi meter).

Utter nonsense! Money is needed to sort out social care so that patients can be discharged safely.

I recently rang for an ambulance with a 2 year old with breathing difficulties. I was told she needed an ambulance immediately but they didn’t have one and to drive to hospital by myself with her while simultaneously keeping her awake and monitoring her breathing. I had to stop several times to wake her up. It was terrifying.

Social care is the biggest issue as many pp have said. A family member works in a private care home. They cannot recruit or retain staff for the wages they pay and are operating at increasingly dangerous ratios or paying agency staff much higher hourly rates. Families want staff to be paid more but do not want to pay more.

What was the outcome?

That’s sound absolutely awful. It’s terrifying when you think the emergency services aren’t actually there anymore. You have this notion that you dial 999 and help with arrive. More and more I’m realising it won’t and I fear the cost is human life. It’s a terrifying time to have young, vulnerable children.

People who think it’s about organisation not funding forget that shortly after the Tories came in, the NHS was rated the best health system in the world for efficiency, ie number of deaths for money spent.

12 years on what’s happened?

minimal pay rises for staff, so staff are leaving the professions in droves. Many newly qualified professionals who now pay thousands to train just never even start the job. They realise they’d earn more elsewhere. 12 years ago the gap between my husband’s pay (non NHS) and mine (NHS) was less than £10000. He’s had inflation linked pay rises. He now earns £35000 more than me.

Brexit- Brexit is probably an even bigger factor than above. EU citizens not only staffed the health service but perhaps more importantly they staffed social care services. Without this workforce, the NHS and social care are both fucked. Frankly if you voted for Brexit you chose this.

The Baby boom generation have all hit retirement thus tax income has reduced and the need for health and social care is every rising. This was never well planned for and it combined with Brexit is resulting in a perfect storm

The answer is
either free migration and that is free migration of ‘unskilled’ workers who staff social care as well as health care professionals

or an extreme rise in wages for health and social care professionals so these jobs (which are after all messy, sometimes dangerous and involve anti social hours) are attractive to our own workers. Effectively starve the private sector of a workforce. We already subsidise vast numbers of these low wage workers with in work benefits so the actual cost of a wage rise would likely be evened out as benefits are a costly way to support people.

Personally I think migration is the answer although it suppresses wages because this is a short term problem, over the next 20 years, the bulge generation will die off releasing vast amounts of money and property into the economy and there will be a natural rebalancing. Off all the times for Brexit, we chose the worst.

Dislocated bones than press on blood supply and lead to amputation . This should be considered an emergency . Make sure if they suffer long term damage they look into their legal rights . This so clinical neglect at its best .

Now that social care has been privatised, people get stuck in hospital beds more. Care agencies and homes need to make a profit under this system, so they establish their protocols, staff pay and fees to reflect this.

This has a knock-on effect on the NHS as people with nowhere to go stay in hospital at massive expense to the service.

Sadly the privatisation of care services also results in poorer care, as staff do not get the support and training they require, and as used to happen when local authorities ran these services.

When you have governments wedded to narrow political dogmas this is what you get. And not just NHS - transport and education too.

I take it you've never dislocated a hip and a shoulder?

In our area there was a decision going back many years whereby one major hospital became a super a&e. It is huge and covers a large area. All other local a&e units were then closed one by one. These would previously have been used for injuries such as in the OP. Many people at the time said having only one a&e would not work and it doesn't. We now have this 'Super' a&e that cannot cope with the numbers needing treatment. People with initially non lifethreatening injuries are being harmed because of the delay in getting treatment.

Amen to all of this! 👆

Domiciliary care ( the majority of which is private ) is in crisis , not enough staff, so very difficult to provide appropriate or safe care packages, and too few beds, especially the short term rehab/step down type

I'm old enough to remember cottage hospitals.
I can't remember who or when, but the decision was taken to close them all down as it was more cost efficient/better medical care to have them all relocated to central hospitals.
That has backfired as most of these elderly don't need continuing medical care, they need rehabilitation and support.
There is one left locally, classified as a community frailty unit, it's excellent because they have all the specialists for elderly care in one spot, have some in-patient beds, and also all the support for dementia, falls, etc etc

@Ekaterina my post came across as entitled. But the present NHS situation cannot continue to prevail. Healthcare in France, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Channel Islands, etc. All works much better. We need a system of social I durance as much of the Continent has. There seems to have arisen a culture of downright rudeness and jobsworthness in our NHS clinical/medical provision. I only use the bits that my insurance doesn't cover; sometimes my GP persuades me to use the NHS for things that are covered. It's always disorganised and sloppy.

My local NHS MH Trust was given 2.3m (CAMHS). They spent it on a tier of additional bureaucracy that sunk the system further. It really isn't all about monet- it's about money and resources being used in a sensible way.

A friend of my DHs (early 40s) took an overdose at the weekend. He then panicked and rang for an ambulance.

The ambulance took 4.5 hours to arrive. They were too late.

Oh yes they did this in our County too. It’s a cost cutting thing, their budgets are so squeezed you can see how the idea was attractive. It also often happens because of lack of staff, easier to staff one hospital. Understandable from that point of view but doesn’t actually work for the patients!

It's just not like that with dislocated joints.

My DB waited 9 hours for an ambulance to take him to A&E, shocking wait times all round

To be fair, the additional rational is that these larger hospitals have concentrated care and expertise that the smaller a&e's could never achieve. It makes sense to have and a&e excellent in stroke care or stab wounds, if they see hundreds a year rather than only one or two. Extreme scenario for effect, but you know what I mean. Again locally, if you have a heart attack you are sent to hospital x, if you have a stroke, you are sent to hospital y. Although this is, of course, not generally available in more rural/isolate communities.

Same ! Our local A&E was closed down about 10 years ago. We now have a larger A&E in another town, which is always packed.
my husband had the situation recently that he had to go behind the scenes at this A&E, he said it was like a war zone, corridors just full of old people on trolleys waiting for beds, he was really shocked.

Steve Baker MP I will never forgive you for closing our local A&E and you will never get my vote.

I hope your friend has been sorted. Just wondered if you could've phoned the OOH doctor in this case to get some stronger pain relief?