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!

So, you’re saying it’s the patient’s family’s fault that we’re in this mess? Just making sure we’re clear, I bet that’s going to help OP and her nan in this traumatic situation, so much. She’s going to be so grateful that you posted that here. People must remark on your compassion all the time.

And another reason why the euthanasia bill won't help. You'll have people suggesting that once you get to a certain age you shouldnt be using the services any more

What did Asda staff do? that is more important, seeing as she was in their doorway.

Labour have screwed up NHS in Wales what makes you think it can sort NHS England out

Yes people do realise it's on the news all the time.
I also helped an old man after a fall last January.
There was a fair wait for an ambulante and he had nobody to wait him, no family etc.

In the end two kind members of the public took him to a and e in their car to save the wait.
It's the way it is.

@LuluBlakey1 LuluBlakey1 · Today 21:10
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.

Oh my god @LuluBlakey1 that is horrific. yOur poor aunt.
did you complain? this is one of the worst things I've read about NHS failings and we have all read so many I'm sure.

this should be drawn to the attention of MPs, the media, the hospital itself, everyone. It's shocking. How can this be allowed to happen in an economically affluent western developed country? Just the same as @LoveCherryTree 's granny. It's enough to want to drive people to an uprising and civil war.

bloody hell, I’m sorry. I hope you’ve been able to make her a bit more comfortable.

The problem is that getting an ambulance is only the start of it. Earlier this year, after waiting for hours for an ambulance, we then waited outside A&E with my MIL with a fractured hip for 9 hours in the back of an ambulance! At one point I thought we were in, as we actually got out and she had an X-ray; but we had to go back out to the ambulance to continue waiting. We finally got in…yay! But no, that was to queue in the corridor to A&E.

The whole thing is broken. I dread getting old/injured/sick

I’m fuming for you. She deserves better

We need to move to a European system, but nobody wants to pay for it.

True, the waiting times for surgery in Wales are much longer and they have been under Labour control for years.

Were you working in A&E in 2009? Can you honestly say with a straight face that things were as bad then as they are now?

3 weeks ago tonight my DH started a 25 hour wait for an ambulance. They called back every 4 hours to say they would be with us soon. He had a DVT which went from his hip to his knee.

In the emergency room we were told that they might not be able to save his leg. He finally came home last night with one leg which works and another which doesn't for now.

Thankfully my 86 year old mum only had to wait an hour when she broke her hip in August.

My aunt lives in an extra care facility where there is care available for her 24 hours a day- the NHS have now 3x this year simply put her in a taxi and sent her back there at night with no notice. Carers are not sitting in the foyer just waiting on the off-chance hospital patients to turn up . So she turns up in a normal taxi, no one knows she has been discharged, she is in her nightie and dressing gown, can not walk , is blind and the taxi driver can not get past the security door or get her into her flat because it is locked.He has to try to find carers who can be anywhere as they are seeing to other residents.
Why can't the NHS do an arranged discharge? The carers would be waiting to receive her. 3x this has happened.
She pays for every minute (and more) of the care she has every day. And it is decent care. The bit that does not work in her case is the NHS.

She has now been constipated (opiates) for 15 days. We have rang the GP 4 times and no one has visited. They promise every time we or the carers ring and no one visits. She has 3 different laxatives on prescription daily but they are not working. She needs an enema and the carers are not allowed to give her enemas. I would bet my month's salary she will end up being taken to A and E tomorrow - when if the Dr just sent a nurse to give her an enema it could be dealt with at home in an hour.

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'm so sorry. We lost my brother to the same thing late last year. He was in a different country and the advance paramedics were with him in ten minutes. He was seen immediately in hospital. There wasn't anything to be done but he was made comfortable until he passed in the early hours of the following morning.

Through the shock and grief, the fast, caring treatment he received was comfort and I'm heartbroken for you and anyone else that has had the opposite of that compounding their grief and distress.

Years ago I used to volunteer in a geriatric hospital (late 70s when I was a St John Ambulance cadet in my teens). Maybe they could be brought back along with more cottage hospitals for convalescence. The bulk of the nursing staff needn't be so qualified as there wouldn't be so much acute care so staffing costs could be lower.

I don't know. I'm just thinking aloud. I may be talking bollocks.

Im so sorry your poor gran is going through this. As a paramedic I speak for myself and many of my colleagues and we all absolutely despise going to these jobs as unfortunately your gran will have been triaged as a low priority call. I especially hate ring run to this type of job and getting stood down for something that gets triaged a higher priority but turns out to be less. After even just 1 hour on the floor she is at huge risk of a condition called Rhabdomyolysis.
I would ring back and tell them she is in severe pain.
As a 97 year old a fall from standing can contribute to significant injuries, especially when mixed with such as anti coagulant meds, frailty etc.
Are you sure she doesn’t have any Rib injuries, head injury, Back pain, Neck pain, Abdominal pain? If she develops any shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, chest pain, abdominal pain or swelling, new neurological defect- weakness, numbness, tingling, confusion, icontinence of urine or feaces, loss of consciousness or drowsy or unresponsive, palpitations, fast heart rate, fast breathing, no pulses felt at the wrist then ring back as these are all red flag signs for a serious injury and would elicit a higher priority call (I hope). I’m not a call handler unfortunately so I do not have any knowledge of the pathways system.
in my job I have found that many people don’t ring back when their relative deteriorates so by the time we get there they can be extremely poorly.

I hope your gran gets the anssistance she needs and the ambulance arrives soon but deffo ring back and give them the proper picture of how much she is suffering.

It is outrageous but sadly that is how things are now and will only get worse. I hope your Nan is ok but please don’t take out your anger on the crew when they arrive; it’s not their fault

Horrific . Personally I think things have got so bad they aren't recoverable .
My mum 82 was kicked by a horse and an ambulance wouldn't come out . There was huge pressure for her to call family to take her to A & E which when we heard we did . God knows how she would have got there if she hadn't had us or we were on holiday .
She broke her arm in two places and when we returned to the fracture clinic for our appointment at 11am already they'd had 4 no show appointments missed . Disgusting abuse by the public .

Yep Have you noticed that the NHS workers on here NEVER mention Carers Allowance and how pitiful it is They were also conspicuous by their abscence on the CA scandal threads.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5048517-to-bring-your-attention-to-the-carers-benefit-fraud-scandal

Instead its all about those shit families who cant be bothered to look after their elderly relatives.

The PP seems very harsh on elderly patients' families, but at the heart of it is an extremely good point, that one of the main reasons the hospitals and ambulances are in such a state is because the failure of social care, which results in "bed-blocking".

A key factor that keeps ambulances backed up in car parks isn't immigration, or too many managers, or obesity, or even aging (though that's a big issue), it's the fact that you can't send "mended" but frail elderly patients home without care.

Without sorting out social care, by extreme measures (probably involving a "death tax") people like with OP's nan will carry on lying on floors for hours. We need to talk about it. (And not by suggesting mass euthanasia).

rubbish, it was never this bad 15 years ago before the evil lying Tory scum took over and gave all the money to their pals and manufactured the disastrous Brexit which caused skilled nhs workers to leave in droves. We need immigrants to staff our care homes and hospitals as fat lazy Brits won’t do it.

I have been a full time NHS hospital consultant for nearly 30 years and there is truth behind most of the problems mentioned here.

I feel defeated and think we are going to have to start paying for it through insurance somehow. But it will be difficult to determine who will have to pay. We need to look perhaps to countries like Belgium and Australia for ideas. No system is perfect but ours is well and truly broken.

No it wasn't. There was a 4 hour wait target for a and E when labour were in power under Blair. Mostly that target was met, for everyone, including less urgent cases. If you waited longer (unusual) it would still be within 5 or 6 hours. Nowadays it's common to wait far far longer. Getting seen within 4 hours is quick now!

Ambulances came quicker too - there were targets for different categories of cases and they were mostly met. Old people simply didn't wait hours and days after a fall. A couple of hours perhaps. Nowadays waiting over 12 is the norm.

Why are you claiming this lie? Do you not remember? Are you a troll?