To buy a stretcher and keep it at home in case of emergency?

[Summersoon8]

I had the thought of doing this and then a few days later I read the story of an elderly man with a broken hip with no ambulances available (not even given a long wait time, just told none available at all) and his family took him to hospital strapped to a plank of wood in the back of a van.

AIBU to consider buying some sort of emergency/folding stretcher online and storing it at home in case we're ever in the same sort of situation?

There's not much point in a stretcher if you aren't trained how to use it properly, or have the ability to correctly secure it in an appropriate vehicle. No matter how light the adult may be it's not easy. There's a reason health workers are trained how to move patients, a back injury is easy to happen and bloody difficult to resolve and you cause more harm than good to the patient.

Community defibs make sense though - the odds of someone in the community needing a defib are much higher than for an individual household. (Also, defibs these days are set up to be used by untrained people so it won't let you do harm.) Unless you have someone in your household who is at very high risk of cardiac arrest for some reason, having a personal one at home would be disproportionate.

I would have thought you would be more likely to hurt yourself trying to manhandle somebody onto a stretcher. Some extra bedding or blankets and a spare pillow might be helpful than a stretcher.

Yeah, this is the worry isn't it? It's not like the op is trying to cut minutes on the ambulance - some people are being left for hours on end - and over a day on occasions.

Thing is, what real good would it do? Let's say you safely get the injured person on a stretcher and into a van. What then? They'll still need to be triaged at A&E, so do they lie on the waiting room floor on a stretcher?

I just think it's more complicated than having a stretcher.

There are first aid course which cover some aspects of moving people 'Outdoors first Aid' The sort of thing you need if you are leading groups in remote areas like moors and mountains. There would be no point having a stretcher unless you'd done an appropriate course on how to move a casualty safely and when to make that decision rather than keeping them warm and waiting for help. The risk of injuring them further would be too high.

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Absolutely, it's more complicated than a stretcher - I just think that is emblematic of how helpless people feel. But I don think the ambulance crisis is forcing different risk assessments of how to respond to an emergency. Presumably if you turned up at a&e with someone at deaths door, you'll get more help than ringing 999 again to find out how much longer it will be?

I do think..

If falls are a worry for you, I think your energy would be better spent in trying to prevent them in your home. E.g. make sure your floor doesn’t have tripping hazards, have grab handles if needed, or use of mobility aids etc…

It is extreme and not long ago, I would have thought you were bonkers. But just last night, I was ruminating the merits of having a bag backed with emergency supplies (ie, passport, battery brick, blow up pillow, etc) just in case.

Of course moving someone is risky but sometimes it's less risky than leaving them - and it's safer with an actual stretcher than with a makeshift stretcher.

I agree. In the story I mentioned in the OP, the family said they were told, after being told no ambulance would be sent, that they should put their elderly father (with a broken hip) in the back of a taxi!

Ok, so say you buy a stretcher……

What are your plans for transporting the imaginary person you have on said stretcher?

If you have a Mini Clubman for example - it might defeat the object!

A broken hip/pelvis/spine/femur etc is one time you really need an ambulance for pain relief so you can move them and for kit to immobilise them so they can be moved safely.

Lots of other times you'd call an ambulance - very sick child, potential heart attack, stroke, abdo pains - you could just drive the person to hospital in the time you're waiting. If they collapse in the car on the way to hospital, well, is that so much worse than collapsing at home with no ambulance help?

So if you want to prep then make sure you have lots of pain relief on hand (maybe talk to a local teenager about some nox...), aspirin for potential heart attack + know where the local heart attack unit is, know how to do the fast test and where the stroke unit is for stroke, and a couple of blankets and petrol in the car.

And check on your elderly frail relatives/neighbours every single day. Twice a day if necessary.

We do have a long wheelbase van on the drive. I am a little bit worried people will be running to us with sick relatives on Amazon stretchers now. It's a step up from being the go-to for IKEA pick ups.

Have you ever done a first aid course?
Surely that would be the first step towards being prepared to cope in a wide range of possible emergencies?
As a PP has said, a (two-day) outdoors first aid course teaches you how to deal with incidents happening far away from roads/ civilisation, incl lifting and transporting a casualty when it's necessary, and understanding when it might be best not to move them.
Is there a reason why you think a stretcher is bound to be needed for someone in your life? I suspect that if you looked into the situations that ambulances are called out for, you'd see that many of them are unrelated to needing a stretcher at all.
If you don't already know how to do CPR, deal with burns/ scalds etc, YABVU.

A Dialysis machine could be the dead envy of your neighbours.

I don't own a van but I have a family member close by who does.

I have several healthcare workers in my family who also live locally. I have only ever done a basic first aid course. I have been watching some videos online by healthcare professionals on how to lift and move people, but I might look at some in person courses to gain better understanding of it.

There’s an ambulance on auto trader

To all the people who think this is a far fetched situation, it’s not.

In October a customer collapsed at my place of work and was unconscious. Despite the fact that she should have been a priority the ambulance call handler had to admit that there were no ambulances available and unlikely to be for many hours. They did however think that she should be taken to an and e straightaway. It was an extremely distressing situation for everyone. There was an evacuation chair in the building and I had to put her in it, get out of the building from third floor, hail a taxi and get her to hospital. Yes of course it was not safe to manhandle her into an evacuation chair as I suspected internal bleeding (which did turn out to be the case). But I had no choice, and I so wished at the time that there was a stretcher available.

Anybody who thinks there is not a crisis has their head in the sand. We should all be thinking about how we should handle these situations.

I'm think of making one of those things they carted Bran in Game Of Thrones about in out of a sleeping bag and two garden canes. Now all I need to get to A&E through the snow is a half-blood giant with learning difficulties.

I was having a really shitty day but reading this has cheered me up and made me smile a little

😂

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