Patients wait two and a half days for an ambulance

[JocelynBurnell]

This is a scary report:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/11/05/patients-wait-two-half-days-ambulance-nhs-crisis-deepens/

Continuing ambulance delays, inaccessible care and soaring waiting lists have resulted in 50,000 needless deaths from heart attacks and strokes since 2020.

I agree it's very, very scary. But there'll be someone (a Torybot) along in a minute telling us that it's all nonsense and everything is fine. And if it's not fine then it's all Jeremy Corbyn's fault.

Oh it's very much a reality. My father waited 22 hours for an ambulance after a nasty head injury.

Told in no uncertain terms not to transport ourselves after asking where the ambulance was.

With 40K nurses short, 5K doctors short and 60K beds cut since 2009, what did you expect? The tory idea was to move the care into community, not just for elderly, but for everyone. Nothing has happened but A&E attendance has skyrocketed. Also, it pays more to work as locum in NHS than a permanent staff. So, who wants to work as permanent staff in NHS? Sort your pension, tax and annual appraisal out, you are the boss of your career. Annual Pension allowance is also not helping clinicians. The most experienced staff are cutting their working hours because if they work more, they pay more tax than take home. What's the point?
My neighbour has been diagnosed with high BP yesterday and he has been started on BP tablets by the pharmacist of his GP surgery !! This should speak volumes. No offence to any pharmacists, they are amazing with their knowledge on drugs, doses, interactions, side-effects etc. But, BP treatment is lifelong and multiple factors including mental health, liver/kidney function, sex life need to be taken into consideration before deciding on which medication suits individual patient lifestyle.

So, next time when you are in that polling station with that card and pencil in hand, think carefully before you put that 'X'. I am not here to tell you whom to vote. But, healthcare facility is the UK has taken huge bashing since 2009 and we will feel the impact for decades to come.

Surely if you can wait two and a half days for an ambulance you didn't need one in the first place? You can get medical attention elsewhere in that time.

Of course there are obvious exceptions, as highlighted by the poster above.

I can’t read the article as it’s behind a paywall thing but potentially someone could have a broken leg, dislocated hip, broken back and not be able to be moved and be waiting excessive times with no choice. You can’t bundle such a person in a car.

This is nonsense. I can see that emotionally it is soothing to pretend this situation is not too bad, but the reality is that a very high number of people who really need emergency care are no longer able to access an ambulance in good time and will die as a result.

The ambulance situation is genuinely dangerous and deaths/disability are going to result.

@OssomMummy1 pharmacists do 5 years of training to qualify. The degree is very clinical these days.

They are more than qualified to initiate BP meds and consider all the factors you mention. Most pharmacists working in a GP practice will have done additional ACP or NMP qualifications too.

Using pharmacists strengths, managing long term conditions and medications makes sense, it frees up GPs for other things, more complex patients, difficult diagnoses, minor surgery etc.

I saw our local police bundled an unconscious person in the back of a police car last week and took them to hospital after being advised they’d be waiting for hours for an ambulance. Can you imagine the uproar though if that person had stopped breathing en route?

It isn't just the ambulance waiting times that are through the roof, either. A&E is the same. I had to visit during the height of the plandemic "pandemic", and it was the most pleasant experience ever...in, x-rayed and stitched up in under an hour, and that included parking! I know someone who visited a few months ago with cardiovascular issues that was left waiting over 24hrs. She actually complained to her MP it was that bad in there.

Deaths are also completely through the stratosphere. There was another report by the Telegraph just recently noting that all cause mortality is exploding higher, and is now running at FIVE TIMES the level of deaths that were being recorded at the height of the " pandemic"..

twitter.com/telegraph/status/1587591663656079360

this phenomenon isn't limited to just the UK, as it is being noted all across the western world..

metatron.substack.com/p/dead-down-under

This is only going to get worse because Rishi and Hunt are planning a 20p flat pension tax assault on all hardworking, tax paying citizens, which will push more people away from NHS by cutting their working hours even further.

uk.news.yahoo.com/jeremy-hunt-plots-10bn-tax-220000269.html

Of course they needed an ambulance. FFS do you think that people choose to just lie there for 2 days if they can get themselves to hospital?

.

So, those who managed to survive two and a half days in agony waiting for an ambulance didn't need one in the first place?

Only the 50,000 or who died needed an ambulance?

Will this be the Catch-22 logic that will be used by the current government to justify the disbandment of the ambulance service?

It doesn't mention if they survived or not though, does it.

I heard of an ex teacher of mine who died waiting for an ambulance earlier this year. Her neighbour said he rang an ambulance for her at 11pm and by the time it arrived at 8 the next morning they entered the house to find her already dead.

Yes, the fact is that people are dying because of this and it's being swept under the carpet.

Yes.

Have you ever heard of a condition called rhabdomylosis, @LadyHarmby ? The result of spending hours on the floor unable to move. It can develop in a lot less than 22. Try spending those hours with someone and you may see things a bit differently. No one who could "get medical attention elsewhere" would chose this.

An elderly coupe I know of had to wait 12 hours after the husband fell on his wife and broke her hop. Both were stuck and the wife particularly in agony. Another elderly person though had an ambulance turn up exceptionally quickly after a major stroke a couple of months ago.
I think we are in a situation where if we can get ourselves to hospital by other means than ambulance then we must.

Where exactly is the ‘elsewhere’ we are expected to get medical attention from now?

Given it’s easier to get an audience with the Pope than it is to get an in-person appointment with a GP or specialist these days, I’m intrigued as to where this other service apparently exists, where you actually get to see a suitably qualified HCP in a timely manner.

Do enlighten us, LadyHarmby.

I read the above post as meaning ‘surely if they triage someone as needing an ambulance they need it there sooner than they could get to a GP’ not that it’s the patients fault

@OssomMummy1 Pharmacists working in GP surgeries usually have additional training and often diagnose and prescribe too. In our surgery one pharmacist practitioner runs the blood pressure clinic and is an expert on pain control, one runs a dermatology clinic and one runs the menopause service. All are expert in those fields and the GPs often refer queries to them.
Please do not denigrate services provided by well trained clinical professionals who often have more time to give patients than GPs do. The NHS now is a multidisciplinary team, not just "doctors and nurses" as the media would have you believe

Getting back to the OPs original point. Ambulance services are hugely overstretched and this is compounded by the waits for hospital admissions. Paramedics are now complaining that delays are deskilling them as, instead of seeing numerous patients per shift, they now often spend the entire time queuing outside A&E

A pharmacy degree is a 4 year masters degree with a 12 month pre-reg year working in various disciplines (hospitals/community pharmacy/GP surgery) it’s a highly skilled clinical roll.
Pharmacists are more than qualified to check blood pressure and write a prescription, they can even order bloods to check your kidney and liver function.

Anyway local prescribing guidelines tell GPs and pharmacists which medication to prescribe in the 1st instance for nearly every thing these days, your dr will just give you what they’re told to give you. I bet your neighbour was prescribed Ramipril or Amlodipine depending on their age.

I saw our local police bundled an unconscious person in the back of a police car last week and took them to hospital after being advised they’d be waiting for hours for an ambulance. Can you imagine the uproar though if that person had stopped breathing en route?

the police are increasingly picking up the slack for MH and ambulance. Not unusual now for the police medics to be sent instead of an ambulance to cat1’s even. They are not supposed to transport- as you say if something happens en route there’ll be hell on, but what do they do? Logically they’re freeing up police and ambulance by just taking someone rather than sitting with them for 3 hours waiting for ambulances.

that’s when they’re not tied up talking people down from bridges or searching for at risk kids.

the the public kick off that they aren’t attending burglaries.

politicians don’t seem to understand that money thrown at public services needs to be spent on actual staff. Not management, thinking up ways to save money or it systems, actual staff.

Maybe I didn’t word it very well. What I meant was if it takes two and a half days for the ambulance to come, it presumably means that they have triaged you as low priority or category 3 or whatever the term is. And then other more urgent calls take your place in the queue and you stay at the bottom of the list.

It all comes back to social care.

Ambulances can't unload at the A and E because there are no beds available in A and E.
There are no beds available in A and E because they are waiting to transfer people onto wards, but there are no beds available on the wards
There are no beds available on the wards because they are waiting to discharge people but can't because there is a lack of social care.

This has been coming a long long time.

Please government, would you mind funding social care properly? It's really quite urgent now.

But they have a conflict of interest, don't they? That's the issue. I really don't want to be accusatory, but if a pharmacist who needs to make a profit- suggests treatment, there's a strong incentive to flog the most expensive, isn't there?

DS has a middle ear infection. All the symptoms. As he couldn't access GP care, he went to a pharmacist, who sold him an outer ear ear-drops drying solution. Which won't touch otitis media.

Please stop voting in the Tories..Some of us won't survive it and some of us have already died because of them and their greedy ,selfish ways. I know Labour hate women especially working class women just as much but much less likely to have you dying waiting on a fucking ambulance.