To wonder if this doesn't upset you, nothing will

[ThirdWorld]

I've name changed for this as it's very identifying.

I live in a small village and and as a treat after a long hard day at work popped into my local pub for dinner.

Lying on the floor was an elderly woman. She was covered with a warm blanket. She had tripped and fallen at lunchtime, and obviously badly hurt herself.

An ambulance was called at 12:30, she is still lying there in the middle of the pub waiting for an ambulance.

I've obviously read about how broken our NHS is and even read the thread on here where a poster had written about her aunt who had fallen and was waiting for about 12 hours for an ambulance. But reading about it and actually seeing it for real is even more heartbreaking.

This poor old woman has been lying on a cold wooden floor for 7 hours! The owners and bar staff have been amazing and are looking after her. Well as much as they can.

I can't tell you how useless I feel. There is nothing anyone can do. The woman has obviously been refusing food or fluid in fear of wetting herself.

I know from reading the thread I mentioned previously that there is nothing anyone can do but wait.

As we left they were getting her a pad to relieve herself. In the middle of a pub!!!

This is 21st century Britain! I don't know what I'm expecting from this thread, am tempted to call the local press to see if the publicity could hurry things along, but that would probably be even more humiliating for her.

This woman has no family and is cold, miserable and in pain lying in the middle of a pub.

I just can't believe our country has fallen to this. God knows when an ambulance will arrive. She will end up getting more dehydrated and probably go into shock. And there is nothing anyone can do.

So distressing to see and my heart bleeds for the poor woman. Just prey that none of your relatives ever have a fall.

Let's hope an ambulance comes soon.

I hope she got an ambulance eventually and wasn’t sat in a corridor when she got there

Private health care has been infiltrating the NHS and UK Society for a while. 20 years ago it was rare to see people using private healthcare.
My suspicion is that these companies are paying corrupt politicians to run down the NHS so they will grow further and eventually have a situation similar to US. People are learning they can't count on the NHS. They will get private health care that will feed in to the NHS recruitment crises as they private care providers grow in size.

Omg that’s awful - 12 hours on a cold hard floor!
I hope she is okay now. Having had an elderly mother with dementia it is heartbreaking to see. I think I may have had to lie on the floor with her

That Channel 4 Dispatches about the ambulance service also had 2 parents carry their daughter into A&E on a picnic table, screaming in agony, because they'd been told there were no ambulances available and the only way she'd be seen was if they got her there themselves. Tory health care in the UK in 2023.

Genuine question, no agenda: is there private emergency health care in the UK? And/or ambulances/paramedics?

Totally agree that private health care is becoming more and more common, and I know people who’ve used it for urgent (not emergency) care, eg stitches. I’m just wondering about the casualty department side of things.

I can’t speak for anyone else of course but I do think that most people’s criticism of the NHS is absolutely not the hard-working staff doing their best but the political decisions leaving it chronically short of funds and thus human and other resources. It must be agonising to go into a profession intending to care for people but finding your hands tied eg spending hours sitting in an ambulance with a patient you’ve stabilised, being abused by sick and stressed people, even before we get to those that you simply can’t help because their time has come.

i currently work for the NHS, and called 999 for a patient having a stroke in an outpatient unit, we were told 2 hour wait for an ambulance for a code red situation. I took him to a&e to be seen.

Unless she had fallen from height or was elderly it is doubtful her injuries would have necessitated no movement. Help her up and transport fgs!

@Bunnyfuller from the OP’s very first post;
Lying on the floor was an elderly woman. She was covered with a warm blanket. She had tripped and fallen at lunchtime, and obviously badly hurt herself.

Obviously how? So often the public go on the old ‘don’t move them’ when actually the mechanism couldn’t have resulted in a serious injury, and someone is left freezing on the floor for no reason. Or left to die from a compromised airway because ‘don’t move them’.

If someone suspected serious injury (sadly broken hip in the elderly isn’t counted as such) why didn’t they relate that to ambo? ‘Badly hurt’ what does that mean?

I agree with you. They simply have to stop this happening. It's inhumane. I doubt people would leave an animal in that much distress.

I have no idea how they haven't already changed ambulance protocols as these are clearly wrong if they are routinely allowing this to happen.

It's simply not okay and I hope every single one of these people takes legal action if that's what it takes to establish change.

Maybe we should all be writing to our MPs

It's not that the protocols are wrong, it's that the ambulances are all tied up at hospital or with more serious jobs. There are too many calls and not enough ambulances, and they're at hospital for too long

I have to set you straight here. I've worked in finance in the NHS since 1997 and it is this simple. In 1997 the Labour govt inherited a service that was threadbare from years of Tory mismanagement and underfunding. Labour took over at a point where hospitals would shut down their elective surgery for 6 months when they ran out of funds, causing huge waste.

At the time I remember regular talk radio debates about the "unviability" of "free" healthcare.

Labour funded it and reformed it and put power into patients hands. It was anazing. Yes they funded through private healthcare to increase capacity. The private hospitals earned the same as NHS hospitals for each case but usually cherry picked the easier cases to make it viable. the NHS improved beyond imagination, to the point where an international report showed it to be the best health service in the world. And a relatively cheap one.

Andrew Lansley, who in my opinion should be in jail, was hellbent on an arrogant, misjudged and disastrous reform agenda. It started to destroy the NHS and the Tories have kept it in a complete state of change ever since. They've eroded every single aspect of high quality and ethics from health. They have no ideological support for the NHS and have successfully defended and destroyed it piece by piece.

They've created unbelievable working conditions for all the front line staff, and all the back office staff have to reapply for their own jobs on a one or two year rotation.

This is an eye witness account over the past 26 years.

Not always true. Yes the ambulance service is massively overstretched. However, the reason people are left on the floor like that is that they are categorised as a non-life-threatening situation.

All I'm saying is they need to review how they prioritise falls like this based on the amount of harm that is being done, albeit the person may not drop dead before they arrive.

I'm not saying that all of the other reasons you state aren't also legitimate, because of course they are in addition.

@anon666 but generally it's not
In front of the people on the floor, presuming they're not on the floor because or with any of the following are
Drowning, hanging, choking, cardiac arrests, giving birth imminently, chest pain, breathing difficulties, anaphylactic reaction, stroke, severe bleeding, unconscious, amputations, open fractures, fitting.....
If the ambulances are all at those, they can't go to someone on the floor. And by the time they come free, there's another 10 priority calls waiting

On the floor with a broken ankle/bruising/small cuts/no injury is way down the list, it's not life threatening at that minute
Yes it can cause complications especially with a broken hip but at that very second the call is made, their life is not in danger

No, absolutely. I'm not disagreeing that the capacity of the whole system needs to increase.

But we need to plan capacity using a prioritisation protocol that includes falls like these in a higher category than they currently sit.

For example are these declared as serious incidents? Are RCAs and harm reviews taking place to establish what happened?

My impression is that the Tories have watered down a lot of the governance.

There are 68 million people in the UK.
10 million in Portugal.
Is it really that hard to understand?

Worrying that so many people think you can just move somebody with a broken hip. The pain alone would probably kill an elderly person, presumably with other health conditions. The UK has gone to the hell in a handcart in all possible ways. We are literally, and metaphorically in the shit and I see no way out. If I were younger, I'd leave.

@ScotsBluebell most of us can't leave anyway thanks to Brexit

She's had 2 operations - one for a broken hip and one to do with complications from lying on a cold wooden floor for nearly 12 hours.

She's "comfortable" but in a hospital about 50 miles away, so can't visit. I wanted to send her flowers instead but I believe you can't do that now?

Oh that’s awful that she has had additional injuries because of the wait, just shocking

Regarding the flowers, I don’t know if it varies per hospital but I had family members in hospital over 10 years ago and the no flowers thing was in place then. So certainly in our trust that’s not a recent change

Why not send a card or balloon?
In our area no flowers has been a thing 20 years plus.

In December FIL (87) on floor for 13 hours with broken hip in excruciating pain, then 5 hours stuck in the ambulance and then another 4/5 hours until actually seen. He was distressed and demoralised. I know there will be similar and worse incidents.

Really really sad!
I remember watching a documentary on TV where an elderly gentleman had fallen in his flat and was laid on the floor, Every-time an ambulance was on its way to him they called out to a more urgent case (heart attack/stoke/choking etc) it was heart breaking and he ended up waiting a ridiculous amount of time!
I wonder if there was some way she could’ve been gently and slowly moved… how undignified to leave her there like that. At the least I feel a screen of some sort could’ve given her some privacy.
I hope the government starts ploughing more money into health and education…. Both are lacking at the moment and both are crucial. Yet we have billions to donate each year… doesn’t make sense

Phone the hospital and ask their policy… I’m sure she’d appreciate a card and kind words as much as anything else x
what a lovely thing to do. Poor woman!