Paramedics made my father go to hospital

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My father has atrial fibrillation. He has had this for years.

He has been told multiple times what to do in the case of an episode of AF. Today, he had one while I was visiting. It took a long time to pass, so in line with his consultant’s plan my mother called 999, after the usual medications had been given at home.

In the time it took for the paramedics to arrive, the attack passed and when they did arrive, it had been nearly an hour since it had ended.

They still made him go to hospital as they “couldn’t rule out a heart attack”, despite my father insisting that he knows his body, knows what an AF episode feels like and knows when it has passed. All he wanted was to go to bed and sleep off the effects of the beta blockers he had taken.

They still essentially made him go to hospital, saying that they would make him sign forms if he didn’t which showed he had refused medical advice. I was present and the paramedics essentially made it sound as though he would be at the back of the queue if it returned and he needed an ambulance again.

Fast forward 10 hours and he’s still in hospital, no doctors available to read his ECG or his blood test results, and he’s been sleeping in a hard plastic chair. AIBU to think this is ridiculous? Paramedics really shouldn’t be encouraging patients to attend hospital when it’s not necessary.

I've been here years and I stand by my comments. The OP makes me sick.

Indeed, I do believe bad karma can follow you when you do shit like this.

You are coming across as quite pathetically unintelligent, op.
Who do you think is actually responsible for the waste of resources? And you want to waste even more of them with your ridiculous, trumped up complaint…
You are an utter disgrace.

This i would imagine 80% of people who go to hospital turn out to be fine but it doesn't mean anyone would be in the wrong for making sure. Especially when its chest pain and Especially in an elderly man with a history.

I have paroxysmal AF which means it comes on at unexpected times but I'm OK mostly. I've had it over 20 years and I know my body and I know how to deal with it. Last time it happened DH called an ambulance and although I was fine by yhe time they arrived I was taken to hospital. I had a 8 hour wait in A&E because of yhe diagnostic tests that needed doing. I had 2 consecutive elevated troponin tests which meant I had had a heart attack despite feeling fine by then. I was in hospital for 4 days.
I know my body, I know 'my' AF, but I didn't know I'd had a myocardial infarction and I'm very glad the paramedics took me to A&E. OP you should be very glad your dad is in A&E too.

YABVVVVVU my god i feel for the paramedics! Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Of course they can’t guarantee there will be an ambulance available for him immediately if he needed it later. Do you have any idea how overstretched the health service is?

If he didn’t want to be taken in he had a choice not to go. Sign the forms and don’t go in. He wasn’t bullied he was given firm, clear, honest medical advice. Maybe that did scare him enough to be taken in and do it bloody well should have.

YAB so unbelievably unreasonable

Fair enough.

However, it's worth remember that MNs relation with what some may view as "the real world" is not uniform, or indeed consistent. It's a self selecting population (and I include myself firmly in that camp)

If the insinuation was that a second ambulance wouldn’t be sent made you worried, then the right thing to do would be to go to hospital. It doesn’t seem at all logical to be insisting he’s fine but also worried about a second ambulance not being sent. If he’s fine, he won’t need one.

Strange they rung for help when they obviously know better

I think it is important to understand what a difficult condition AF can be to manage. It is unrelenting, unpleasant and unpredictable. I know this from long experience.
There have been occasions when I have been seen by paramedics and not been admitted because the ecg did not show signs of a heart attack. That is not a certainty and the paramedics' protocol is to recommend admission to a and e for troponin levels blood test. But the patient can make a choice. The visit from the paramedics has the gain of doing an ecg.

I think we should cut this family a bit of slack. AF is distressing and having anything wrong with your heart is frightening.

You weren’t qualified or equipped to help your father & so called an ambulance, in line with his care plan. Then, the qualified paramedics assessed him and decided it was best he went in for more testing. What did you expect would happen? And if it took an hour for them to come, why didn’t you cancel it if you thought he was fine?

Exactly. I came out of work dreading, but preparing for, an afternoon in A and E but if it was needed it was needed!

Fgs they send ambulances out to bloody repeat callers they know are time wasting - it’s a high bar to refuse to send one out.

OP, so if the blood test at A&E showed he was having heart attack, then you would not complain? You are complaining because your dad is well?

Are you going to complain that the sun is shining?

You weren’t qualified or equipped

Bit elitist, surely ?

Really!!! I'm shocked you think the paramedics have behaved anything other than professional medically trained people. Your df can ask for canula to be removed and leave, it's not the jail.

All the more reason to want to access medical help / advice, and absolutely no excuse for op’s nonsensical behaviour in (officially) complaining that that’s what they were given.

I'm sorry that your DF had to go through this, but I'm not sure that the time spent waiting is not what they do for all suspected heart attack patients. My DH called 111 last year and they called the paramedics who brought him to the hospital as a heart attack was suspected. Bloods were taken when he arrived, but it was over 4 hours (possibly longer) before someone saw him. We railed against that long wait and was told that the test they do with the bloods takes that long to indicate whether there had been a heart attack or not. It wasn't in his case, but as it was a weekend, they wanted to get him on a ward to be seen by a consultant on Monday! But there were no beds, so he spent the night on a trolley, eventually kicking up a storm to ask to be discharged and seen as an outpatient on Monday, which they did.

Not really. Why call an ambulance if you can manage the situation without one?

I thought there wasn't any need for a smiley icon 😀

What’s elitist about telling a person with no medical qualifications that they’re not in fact medically qualified?
You’re clearly just shit stirring.

It was more of a reflection than a direct comment .....

You’re misunderstanding what chronic means. Your opening post describes someone with chronic AF.
I’m sorry you and your Dad had a long day but ultimately he is alive despite less than ideal health care that unfortunately is not the fault of NHS staff on the front line. They have been chronically underfunded for too long and we are all now paying for it with a substandard service. Many of us are in the same boat. Diverting extra funds to their complaints service to write you a sorry letter won’t change where we are.

Some people seem determined to argue with the OP. There is no problem with them urging the patient to go to hospital; they tend to take a better safe than sorry approach. However, they had no right to tell him an ambulance would not be sent if he needed one later - it's not their decision, and even if it were, refusing to attend a suspected heart attack would definitely land them in court.

No surprise the NHS workforce are burned out and wanting to leave.

in your father’s case, they attended when you called, they examined him, following standardised medical criteria (bearing in mind paramedics are first responders not cardiology doctors) they advised hospital.

All the “insinuating” about not getting another ambulance, no call centre is going to deprioritise a second call if a heart attack is suspected, but if you called back later after changing your mind, it may flag somewhere that you already refused care earlier in the day and waits may be longer. They can be long anyway with current nhs pressures.

He was taken to hospital, had obs taken, had a long wait, likely because there was not acute concern from his initial obs and other patients were more acutely ill than he was, but was in the right place if anything did happen.

On pressure from your family a doctor was pulled in to check his results and decided he could be discharged.

What exactly is your complaint apart from general nhs pressures which result in long waits and corridor care, none of which is the fault of individuals working within the system?

I know paramedics and they get abuse every day from upset, worried people who have waited too long for an ambulance. It is not their fault the system is in the state it’s in and they are having to navigate that system to ensure patients are safe, even if that means they are over cautious with some patients.

Nothing bad happened, he was not injured by a bit of overcaution, but you still want to ruin someone’s week/month by having a complaint raised and investigated. They are human beings doing their best in extremely difficult circumstances, witnessing heart breaking situations and losing patients on a daily basis. Don’t underestimate the amount of distress a complaint can make to individuals who are doing their best.