Would you make a complaint about these paramedics?

[WatermelonWaveclub]

I went to my GP the other day as I kept fainting when coughing. The GP said my HR was sky high. Then I coughed and fainted in front of the GP. Afterwards I couldn't move my legs properly. She phoned the hospital who said I need an ambulance. The GP got someone to get me in a wheelchair and take me to the nurse's room where I was put on a bed in a cubicle.

Anyway a few minutes later the ambulance crew turn up (3 of them). They did an ECG - ok but tachycardic. I said my legs were feeling ok by then. They did a lying and standing BP and checked I could feel both sides of my face, could hold both arms up, checked pupils etc. So they say they need to take me to hospital. They start heading off and so I follow them on foot. They're all walking ahead of me, chatting away, not one seeing if I'm ok. So consequently we get into the car park - I have a coughing fit and next thing I know I'm waking up on the car park floor.

I can't stop thinking about it. Were they at fault? Should they have used a wheelchair or at least someone walked with me? At the hospital they wouldn't even let me go to my scans etc in a wheelchair, I had to be taken in my bed. So if GP and nurse wouldn't let me walk was it right that the paramedics did?

@SleepyRich

I wouldn’t bother. The op isn’t actually bothered about putting a complaint in. More interested in cherrypicking and deliberately misinterpreting responses to bash an entire profession based on one crew.

OP - another person said 3 pages later you mentioned a brain bleed. I don't know you from Adam.
I have not attacked you. I have said from the start that paramedics and hospital staff have a duty of care - always - but so do we for our own health. Nothing wrong with me asking why you got up and walked. HOWEVER it makes sense when you explain your story later. It's a forum, you post something, people have the right to ask you whether you agree with the questions or not.

20 PAGES later. What else do you want me say. Everyone including me have said report them, I have also wished you well OP as I didn't realise you were confused. And yes you did drip feed information to start, but as you say you had brain injury so it's acceptable. Bottom line, report - there's something to learn here.

Careful, you will be accused of being devoid of empathy, common sense and empathy

I am finding your responses really worrying.

this presumption that the crew would have recognised their mistake is baffling. Their actions at the scene fell well beyond the basic standards of care that I would expect - and indeed that were expected of me when I worked in healthcare many years ago.

The crew basically ignored the patient - they did not explain anything clearly to her and they spoke amongst themselves as if she were an inanimate object they were transporting.

The BASIC standard of care was appalling, that was what allowed this to happen. Have standards in healthcare really fallen so low?

OP reports losing consciousness and later drip feeds she had a brain bleed. I can’t take anything she says about her interpretation of events as accurate given that.

It would have been useful if OP had mentioned she'd had a stroke in her first post. I know she didn't know this at the time, but if she had said that this is what it had turned out to be then people would have had a better understanding of the situation.

I’m quite shocked at how you say your service addresses complaints. I work in social care as a manager and deal with a number of complaints and feedback. I actively encourage people to give feedback and to complain when parts of the service let them down. If you’ve waited too long to be seen by us, I say “complain!”. These complaints are recorded and then change starts to happen.

I don’t understand how you learn and improve if you don’t reflect upon errors, however minor.
The process you describe is dismissive to patients and unhelpful but explains a lot about the culture of certain parts of the NHS.

SleepyRich
"We found overwhelmingly that being aware of every complaint/grievance was detrimental to staff wellbeing and performance and this is why it was stopped. I don't believe your complaint here would meet the criteria to pass it onto the staff members involved but that is decided on a case by case basis so as I said no reason not to write it for yourself."

Seems a very low bar considering the OP could have been seriously injured by her fall and at the negligence of the ambulance staff . Thank God Iv'e only had experience with excellent and caring paramedics.

I just wanted to give the information that was known at the time of the incident as I thought if I said I'd had a brain bleed it would skew it to everyone saying the crew were at fault.

However, I did indicate that I was having neurological symptoms in my OP.

Fair enough yes, I was confused and I'm just piercing things together but I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining the whole incident.

Ok, fair enough.

I completely agree. I can't understand the refusal to improve after a near miss. But hopefully this is just that trust. I couldn't sleep last night with the pain in my head and got really worked up about it thinking all ambulance crews would be like that but that's hopefully not the case. And it doesn't stop conscientious ambulance crew reflecting and finding out information themselves. I just find it bizarre that leadership would not support them with that.

In her very first post, @WatermelonWaveclub says that she lost the use of her legs, @eise. That IS a neurological symptom - so even if you didn't read any of her updates, there was enough information in the first post to tell you that she should not have been left to walk unsupervised and unattended to the ambulance.

You have it exactly backwards. OP is very curious—as are many of us—to see how a higher level person thinks about the incident.

I have worked in a clinical setting where we would have had to fill out an incident report and reviewed it with a manager regardless if whether we were responsible for it or not. If it happened on our shift and we witnessed it we would fill it out. If we were responsible we weren’t made to feel bad about it but best practices would have been reviewed/more training offered.

What interests me about these responses is not the refusal to (hypothetically) speakto the crew about what happened (I accept that it would be devastating if, in such a critical profession, the crew were constantly faced with sad or frightening news about the outcome of the transports). But it is really interesting to see how vital the flight from Perceived shame snd accountability is for the whole NHS. The commenters who consider the whole idea of the “complaint “ to be anathema, the self described supervisor who explains in detail that nothing could/should/would be done differently the next time because nothing wrong was done by the crew? Even the supervisor is more interested in avoiding the perceived shame that comes with the barest acknowledgment of wrong and lectures the OP about how trivial her fall was (and how cruel she would be to criticize the care she was given). That is astounding! And, of course, wuite interesting.

Astounding is a good word!

@WatermelonWaveclub ive no idea why people are still picking apart your story. Of course ambulance staff don’t know the diagnosis most of the time, but they were entirely wrong to let you walk on your own. Even if you had nothing more than a sprained wrist and were fine and were walking to the ambulance, someone should have had eyes on you.

All your responses have been thoughtful and measured and I’ve no idea why people are acting you so much.

The ambulance staff had entirely decided you were a hysterical female and nothing was wrong. I’m sorry that happened to you.

Really worrying that complaints aren’t fed back to ambulance staff. You know doctors have to respond and reflect on every complaint or feedback? In their official log? Why would you not even tell staff!

Yes, I really can't understand not feeding back in this circumstance.

I definitely think it could have been as you suggest I was considered 'a hysterical female'. Fortunately, my GP and the hospital did not see it that way.

@SleepyRich - don't you think it is a serious incident when an ambulance crew fail to accompany safely to the ambulance a patient has fainted repeatedly and that she has had neurological symptoms (the loss of the use of her legs), resulting in a fall in the car park? Your posts seem to minimise the incident - but the fall could have exacerbated the haemorrhagic stroke that @WatermelonWaveclub was having, resulting in long term disability or even death. The fact that it didn't, is lucky, but the next patient this happens to might not be so lucky.

I used to be a nurse, and I think it is a very serious incident, and @WatermelonWaveclub has every right to want the ambulance service to take it seriously.

It doesn't have to involve tarring and feathering the crews involved, or taking them off the road for a long investigation - but a message to them, and to all the other crews, that mobile patients who are walking to the ambulance must be accompanied and observed by the crew attending them would be an entirely proportionate response, imo.

But there is something to learn here like in a missed fracture case.

They don’t even need to know that there was a complaint to learn from the incident- they need to know that what they seemed to think was a hysterical fainting coughing lady was actually a stroke so that next time they see such a presentation they don’t miss a stroke. I hope that if they had thought she was having/had had a stroke with ongoing neurology they would not have left her to walk unaccompanied? (I understand the ambulance chairs are very small and transfer to a trolley brings it’s own difficulties - Its the unaccompanied/unsupported bit rather than that she was walking that is the issue for me)

a lot of reframing seems to be needed - rather than saying “that soft tissue injury was actually a fracture and the patient is upset” can’t the ambulance crew be told “that soft tissue injury was actually a fracture “ (and if there was a clinical sign that was missed they could be told “next time check for xyz” of course sometimes there isn’t so it’s then “no way you could of known, you safteynetted well because they then represented the next day”.

I’m a HCP (not outing myself by saying what sort) I actively follow up cases I’ve seen and handed over to others for care because I like all humans make mistakes. I need to know where my mistakes are so I don’t make the same ones against

The fact that you are in charge of anyone is a scary thought. A whole post full of excuses and no accountability for anyone.

I could not possibly be more disgusted but am glad as heck that you are not in charge or have any power over medics in this area. No wonder the ambulance service is so crappy now!

The rot clearly starts at the head if sleepyrich is really in a position of authority.

Not every complaint in my Trust is filtered down to crews but one like this would definitely be looked into a bit more and the crew would be asked for statements.

It's amazing that some seem to think what that crew did was "fine", "ordinary" and "acceptable". The bar has been set so low that the lowest just have to crawl over it to be lauded as "professional".

LUCKILY, the taxi driver was more intelligent than the ambulance crew and someone "senior level in the ambulance service". They helped the patient into the GP and walked WITH them instead of ahead, chattering to others about where to have dinner or where the next bar hop will start.

But hey, we don't want to hurt the feelings of anyone on that ambulance crew so we will just be ostriches and keep our heads stuck in the sand and then wonder why the NHS ambulance service has SOME real nitwits on it.

I hope and am relatively sure that most of the ambulance/first responders are more intelligent than that crew. Even if their superiors aren't.

Well, we have gotten to read a post from someone in "the ambulance service at a senior level" and frankly, their opinion is horrifying.

Basically, they don't GAFS because they don't want to hurt someone's itty-bitty feelings by making them informed on how to do better and be better.