97 Yr old Gran waiting 8 hours for an ambulance with a broken hip!

[LoveCherryTree]

My Gran, 97 years of age, given to this country in World War, paid her taxes and NI all her life. She fell today in her home at 12pm, she has a broken hip, my Father called 999 and it is now 8pm and still no ambulance.
She can’t go to the loo as she can’t get up, my Father who has Parkinson’s and my Uncle, who has throat cancer, both in their 70’s, sitting with her.
This country is broken beyond repair, I even tried to get a private ambulance and they said that it won’t make a difference because all the front line ambulances are sat at the hospital with patients inside because they can’t get them into the hospitals….I despair, so it’s better for my 97 year old Gran to be in agony and wet herself, I just can’t believe it! Anyone know a member of parliament I can talk to about this? I’m utterly disgusted!

That’s disgusting. Your Gran should be shown the dignity, care and respect she deserves.
This country is going downhill fast.
I’m so sorry op. I hope she gets help soon 😢

I am very sorry your gran waited so long.
Too many people and too little beds/ ambulances it seems.

It gets very busy over winter periods.

Ask your government to rally for our NHS.

Again TO ANYONE if you don't need to go please don't go to A&E with things you should be seeing your doctor about. Even pharmacy can help.

What a load of twaddle. It was awful under labour too.

Ambulance waiting times in 2009-10

The percentage of category A incidents that resulted in an emergency response arriving at the scene of the incident within 8 minutes in 2009-10 was 74.3 per cent (same as the previous year).

The percentage of category A incidents that resulted in an ambulance vehicle capable of transporting the patient arriving at the scene within 19 minutes1 was 96.8 per cent (96.9 per cent in the previous year). For category B incidents this was 91.0 per cent (same as the previous year).

digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/ambulance-services/ambulance-services-england-2009-10#:~:text=The%20percentage%20of%20category%20A,same%20as%20the%20previous%20year).

And it also needs, given that we have a growing aging population, for the general public to take far more responsibility for their own health and fitness so that the people who do need medical attention are more likely to get it.

Agreed 👍

It didn't. But it's true, it is a shit show now

MIL had a fall earlier this year and was waiting over 9 hours for an ambulance, however when we found FIL unresponsive we had 2 ambulances arrive within 8 minutes.

It doesn’t make MIL wait time any better, but did bring it home that the long wait times are because the service are having to prioritise situations where there is an imitant threat to life.

Unfortunately FIL didn’t make it, one ambulance left quite quickly but the other stayed outside for around 2 hours completing end of life documentation. It turns out there is a lot of admin for the service when things don’t work out.

Is she still at home OP? There comes a point where you just have to find a way to get them in yourself, we were refused an ambulance for ‘low priority’ FIL who was immediately diagnosed with sepsis on arrival to A&E.

FIL was left lying in the middle of the road for 5 hours. He’s 83. Ambulance never came - in the end the police took him to hospital. Bleed on brain…

it’s a horrible mess and everyone needs to pay way more tax if it’s to get better. Very few of the elderly are net contributors over their lifetimes and unless half us pay in more than we get out, the system is broken (yes I know that’s not quite right, but it’s not a bad approximation)

My 92 year old aunt- who can barely walk with a walker, has osteoporosis and scoliosis and is blind- was left in her wheelchair in A and E overnight with pneumonia and no treatment and a thin blanket. She was then given 24 hours of intravenous anti-biotics, then an enema at 8pm.
An NHS Dr assured her sister at 7pm that she would not be discharged that night and that when she was it would be in an ambulance and after liaison with her assisted care facility.

At 8.30pm that night she was discharged into a normal taxi, in a nightdress and dressing gown. The taxi driver drove her back to her extra-care accommodation - where no one had no idea she was being discharged and there was no one to meet her. She had emptied her bowels in the taxi.

A carer who happened to be passing by helped the taxi driver get her into her flat, showered her down and got her into bed. However the enema kept having it's effects and she was found on the shit-covered bathroom floor the next morning very weak and cold.
And the hospital refused to return her wheelchair- it is hers not an NHS wheelchair. In the end I went to collect it, found it in the ward and just told them I was taking it back as she had paid for it.
The NHS is absolutely fucked.

Well which would you rather they do? Leave the one in immediate danger of death?'

Yes and absolutely nothing to do with Blair opening the flood gates of mass immigration. Yet people still expect the same levels of care, service and infrastructure etc. Wake up.

Iraq. Foundation hospitals. Deregulation of Financial authorities. Uni fees. I could go on and on....

Again TO ANYONE if you don't need to go please don't go to A&E with things you should be seeing your doctor about. Even pharmacy can help.

We haven’t successfully got a GP appointment with our NHS GP for years. If you get through on the phone, big if, they have no appointments ever. The one time we got one, it was at an alternative surgery several miles away and was was later cancelled by them and we were told to go to A&E. The pharmacist seems to say you need to see GP for most things so people are often stuck in a cycle. We pay for private GP appointments when needed, which not everyone can afford. So imo people often have no choice but to go to A&E. When wait times are many hours, I don’t think most people do it lightly. They’re often desperate for help.

I’ve tried to call a private ambulance and they even told me she’s better off at home because she’ll sit in an ambulance outside the hospital for hours to get in

I'm so sorry for your loss

My dad was sent home from hospital on 16th September. He died on 6th October after a fall at the bottom of the stairs due to weakness from prostate cancer

There is always one ill informed idiot making sweeping statements about NHS Managers who hasn’t a clue what that term means in practice - likely read it in the Daily Mail as it’s bandied about in their comments section by the people frothing at the mouth about immigrants coming over here and filling the NHS beds.

Who should be expected to manage resources in the NHS? Shall we get a clinician who has studied for years on end in a medical specialty to prioritise that over actually treating patients?

The problems affecting the NHS are many and varied. If people want to have an overview perhaps they could start with the recent Darzi report - I’m not saying it’s 100% correct but has been written by people who actually work in the NHS rather than by someone who claims to know all the problems but in reality hasn’t a clue.

You’ll have seen many people explaining about the role that a lack of effective social care plays in improving patient flow through the hospital. Social care offerings were decimated under the Tory government. The hospital cannot simply discharge someone who is deemed healthy enough to no longer need to remain if there is nowhere for them to safely go. Many of these people are elderly, staying in hospital is actually far less safe for them than being at home with adequate care provision.

The solution isn’t simply building more hospitals - it is about prevention, it’s about best use of resources and right care at the right time, it’s about treating people in the community rather than thinking that the only place to get effective treatment is a hospital.

Not sure what your problem is?

I was very glad they came so fast when I was hit by a speeding car.

Oh my word that's horrific, poor lady

We’ve been one of those families. One of those families who are unable to take an indefinite amount of unpaid leave from work several times a year to give full time care to an elderly relative deemed well enough to be discharged- can’t stand unaided, walk to the loo, or make a piece of toast, but they can go home with no care in place…

The only way the NHS and social care will be ‘fixed’ is if people pay for it. If I hear FIL say one more time that he paid full stamp I will scream. They didn’t put it in an account with his name on, and even if they did it wouldn’t be worth nearly enough to pay for the care he’s receiving. The system is horrifically expensive to run, and it simply needs to be paid for. People don’t want an NI increase and they don’t want to sell granny’s house, so where does the money come from?

Why are you telling me to wake up? I’m more than aware of the issues, I have consultants, doctors, nurses and other NHS workers in my family and frienship group. All of them see it as a case of bad use of resources, bad structure and bad management rather than it all being about immigration. It sounds like you read too much of a certain newspaper.

Her sister had been with her on the ward at 7pm and was assured by the Dr she was definitely not going to be discharged that night- enema going to be given as she suffers constipation from morphine. Her sister is 80 and at that point felt safe to go home, assuming the Dr was telling her the truth.

I’m so sorry it’s honestly awful! I’m an elderly nurse and it breaks my heart when we have admissions of elderly that have been on the floor up to 24 hours!

I had similar at the start of the year, my 57 year old mum was waiting 5 hours for an ambulance with suspected stroke. She actually had a catastrophic brain bleed and we lost her as it wasn’t survivable. I did ask in ICU if they thought her wait for an ambulance would have changed the outcome. She was high priority and they had to divert an ambulance in the end from another area but I’ll always unfortunately wonder ‘what if’