Paramedics made my father go to hospital

[wecangoupupup]

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.

If paramedics, feel a need to take a patient to hospital, that's what they have to do. Sometimes they can't do r8ght for doing wrong. It is not their fault your father is still waiting to see a doctor. I think you are extremely ungrateful. Your father was given the opportunity not to go to hospital, but wouldn't to sign to say he wouldn't go. Paramedics have to be looked after too, otherwise people would be whining, and suing. These paramedics put up with more than you could ever know, you should be grateful they care so much. Bloody hell, l find it so annoying you are complaining...

This!

The long wait in A&E and the paramedics are two different issues.

Isn’t that fair enough though, if you think about it in terms of prioritisation and taking your own emotion out of it? He calls an ambulance, they say go to hospital, he refuses and then calls an ambulance half an hour or whatever later?! They are an extremely stretched resource so can’t keep going to the same houses for the same incident if the patient refuses their advice to attend hospital. The dire state of the hospital waiting time is not their fault, they are just recommending what they think should happen from a medical and patient safety perspective.

Would you rather that they didn’t recommend that he went and it was a heart attack?

I work for the ambulance service as a clinician and they absolutely did their job correctly. Nobody “forced” him to go, they can’t kidnap him he would have had to agreed to it. If you refuse to go then standard procedure is to get the patient to sign to say they are going against medical advice.

I don’t see your issue here!?

Her issue is simultaneously that her dad wasn’t ill enough to be recommended a trip to hospital by the paramedics and also that her dad was so ill that he should have been top priority when arriving at a&e.

Absolutely this! Which is it @wecangoupupup ?
he didn’t need to go to hospital or should her have been cat1 on admission?

It’s a bit baffling.

If the paramedics were incompetent, that would mean the hospital staff were perfectly competent. And vice versa. There can’t be a complaint towards two sets of medical staff for acting in opposite directions to the same problem. Someone must have been right 😂

I had a stroke, a second in the ambulance and a third in a cubicle several hours later that could have been prevented if someone had bothered to come see me. 7 hours later..the golden hours 4 for a stroke. ..they turned up. I’d lost my left side. The FACT says, the sooner we see you, the more of you we can save. …so no one came to save me. Months later another ambulance..I was in it for 7 hours, at the doors to A&E , transferred to another ambulance in the queue as mine had finished their shift for another 3 hours before getting into the hospital . It sucks but it’s the way things are

If he knows his own body, don’t call an ambulance if you don’t need it. He knows so much, he’s holding back an ambulance from someone who does need it.

Your post makes me really sad. I truely hope you’ve calmed down and not filed that complaint. Those paramedics did their job. The a&e staff (who will more than likely staff the decision unit) were doing their job. Both in under funded, under resourced, chaotic areas that I imagine you wouldn’t last working in for 5 minutes. Have you any idea how soul destroying it is for them to do their job and then some idiot complains for trying to make sure they didn’t die. I’m glad your dad was ok but that was just sheer luck. Next time he may not be so lucky. If the paramedics said “ok pal. No worries. Don’t bother following our advice” and he had died, would you have been ok with that? GET A GRIP

A) the paramedics didn't want to leave him at home with no equipment, no medical expertise, no medication, no doctor.

B) they left him in a hospital with all of these things, filled with other patients who were also having tests for various things.

Next time, if he and everyone else is so sure he knows his own body, none of them will be calling for an ambulance which will solve the issue.

OP is one of the reasons I left nursing. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Everyone knows more than medical staff.

Like others have said, just sign a form and leave.

Having an IV inserted isn't major. I've seen patients pull them out just because they didn't want to take the pole with them to the toilet.

It never fails to amaze me how gullible some people are. The OP could have said the moon is made of blue cheese - would you blindly believe them? The OP's story was embellished with each post to try to make it sound better from their point of view. Also, it is not up to paramedics to decide when an ambulance is sent.

And for what it's worth, I'm not a NHS worshipper, I don't even live in the UK.

You called an ambulance, never cancelled an ambulance, your father refused to sign a form saying he didn’t require transport to the hospital. You can remove him from the hospital if you want.

The NHS is completely broken. It’s not the paramedics fault. This is what happens when you get an aging population and free hospital visits.

Implying he’d he at the back of the queue if he didn’t follow their advice is terrible.

I'm sure the paramedics have heard of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, a relatively common medical condition in elderly patients, and something which is still a risk factor for further conditions such as strokes, hence the need for him to be on the anticoagulant medication you have mentioned.

Perhaps the paramedics suggested there would be difficulty with getting an ambulance later due to the event you said is happening locally and the fact it is a bank holiday weekend which always puts pressure on emergency services.

If he had then died, it would be awful and questions would have then be raised as why the paramedics didn't take him to hospital. They have erred on caution.

Perfectly put!

Even when it was pointed out to this PP that the paramedics had changed from insinuating to actually point blank saying “we won’t send another ambulance” they couldn’t grasp that it was being embellished!

I don’t think the OP will
have complained, they were just unwilling to
lose face on here. Although they asked AIBU, they didn’t really want to know they were.

10 hours later and a doctor is finally with him. It’s just so, so unacceptable

This is the actual problem.

Not that the paramedics gave their best advice. They weren't saying that an ambulance wouldn't come, if they called again, they were saying they're so overstretched that they couldn't guarantee one would be able to arrive in a timely manner, which is true.

If your Dad had been seen by a Dr within a couple of hours, you wouldn't be on here moaning (I doubt you'd be singing their praises either), so that's the real issue here!

Well if your DH was having a heart attack at the same time, where would you want them to go? To a person with a history of false alarms, or a new case that didn’t? There are only so much resources.

The attack had been over for an hour by the time they turned up, so why didn’t you cancel the ambulance? I think paramedics generally have a duty to insist you go get checked over, irrespective of whether you feel better when they arrive or not. Every time I’ve called one the person has been taken to hospital anyway, even if they’re feeling a little better.

Do either of you drive anyway? It’s quicker to drive to a&e than wait for an ambulance.

Because the ambulance would be too busy attending people who didn't need them 🙄

Yes and deep down she knows this. But she also knows that if she complains about it taking ten hours to be given the all clear when doctors are no doubt dealing with actual life and death cases then she will come over as an entitled madam.

Yes I’m well aware 🤷‍♂️

So you presumably told the paramedics the instructions of the cardiac surgeon to ring 999 ? and they advised to attend per his instructions. Yes it's frustrating that you've had a long wait but I dispute that in 10 hours a doctor hasn't reviewed his ecg and bloods. They will have been reviewed and probably nothing to worry about but they won't release him until they've consulted with the cardio respiratory on call and discussed the case