brother died in middle of road waiting for ambulance

[hangingonfordearlife1]

2 weeks ago my brother was driving taxi when he experienced chest pains. his customer called 999. 1hour and 30 minutes later he went into cardiac arrest and customer started cpr on floor in road. when ambulance turned up 15 minutes later he was still in cardiac arrest. tried 5 times to revive him and worked on him. arrived at hospital 45 minutes later and pronounced deceased.

the ambulance took 1hour and 45 minutes to arrive for a suspected heart attack and then a further 45 minutes to get him to hospital

he's gone and nothing we can do about that but legally where do we stand about asking for an investigation. Not for compensation but actual reasons so we can understand what happened. why did they take so long?

Also we didn't find out until 1 day later after calling round the hospitals to see if he had been admitted as hadn't heard from him. his address was clear on his driving license. why didn't they inform us?

I absolutely agree with all of this.

The NHS is utterly broken thanks to the lack of money/planning by the previous government. I’m no champion of Labour but they’re right when they say we need to endure some painful decisions to get money into critical services like the NHS.

My DM was really ill last week, severe asthma attack, she couldn’t breathe. GP said ring 999 immediately. Ambulance service said they were completely overwhelmed and didn’t know how long it would take - to a 77 year old woman who’s literally gasping for every breath and in serious respiratory distress.

I’m not even going to go into what a shambles it was in hospital. DM was admitted for a few nights but had to stay in the A&E temporary ward on a makeshift bed as there were no beds on the ward. Kind staff, clearly really hardworking, but many of them seemed flustered and a bit clueless about how to do fairly basic stuff. I’m not criticising them as it was very obvious they were doing their best and trying really hard but they seemed to be lacking in knowledge and there were no experienced staff around for them to ask/get help from.

The whole system is broken from start to finish. It needs a thorough review by an independent body who can strip out the unnecessary red tape and burocracy, streamline the system and direct money to where it’s needed. And it needs an injection of cash from government which won’t come cheap.

Until you try and use the NHS for a critical situation, it’s hard to comprehend what a mess it’s really in.

AlsoOP, I am so, so sorry about your brother. I imagine you’re a bundle of conflicting emotions right now - grief, anger, resentment. Such awful circumstances to lose him in, especially when it feels as if earlier treatment might have meant a different outcome. That might not have been the case but it’s so hard not knowing what might have been.

I hope this thread has given you some ideas about where to go for answers. I suspect that a large part of the issue is simply a service that’s stretched beyond capacity and struggles to effectively prioritise but that’s no comfort.

Sending you lots of love 💐

Condolences on your family's loss.

Same & quoting so you can be reminded of the support available. I am in Australia and awake during your night time. Pm me anytime, if you need a soft place to fall.

I'm so sorry for your loss.
The whole system is so broken, be prepared to get some generic response that is not really an actual apology.

To reassure you OP, the coroner will be investigating as it's an unexpected death so you don't need to specifically raise it. They will be looking at the ambulance service's role in the death but unfortunately, ambulance delays are unavoidable. Calls will be responded to in order of priority. Chest pain is a category 2 emergency but as soon as he arrested, a subsequent 999 call would have made it a category 1. They failed to meet the 7minute target if they took 15 minutes but if there is no available resource, what can they do? Also, once they arrive, they cannot just 'load and go', they would have given good resuscitation until he was stable enough to move to hospital. I'm sorry for your loss though and agree the ambulance service is fucked.

Sending love to you

I'm really sorry. To add to what others have said, I would contact the charity Action for Medical Accidents. They have recently been helpful to me about negotiating the complaints process.

I’m so sorry. Horrible and painful for you.

it’s a real shock to realise that we don’t live in a country with reasonable medical care anymore.

A German friend of a friend had a similar experience in England two years ago -!they’ve been told that he would almost certainly have survived in Germany. His family were incredulous and stunned at the lack of emergency services. - both ambulance and emergency care at hospital. None of them will ever set foot in the UK again and they’ve made representations to the German equivalent of the Foreign Office that a warning ought to be added to the travel section to indicate that shortages of ambulances/healthcare are a significant risk of travelling here.

I think we are getting to the stage were people having heart attacks or bleeding out will be arriving at A&E in private cars and taxis being treated ahead of all the people sat outside hogging ambulances. If I had a serious health emergency, absolutely no way would I wait for an ambulance. Cat 1 now = get yourself to hospital. Cat 2 and below, you can safely wait hours so there's nothing left for Cat 1.

No point contacting the MP. They will just direct the contact to the ambulance service complaints dept. OP, the ambulance service website will have info on how to make a complaint. (I work in complaints for an NHS Trust). Sorry for your loss x

The PP is assuming that you will be treated as a priority at A &E if arriving other than by ambulance- or even then. My father in law in his 80s with a serious head injury waited five hours for an ambulance then another five in ambulance outside hospital before spending 18 hours on a trolley, then being admitted. His head injury was serious, he contracted Covid in hospital and he died.

I am so sorry for your loss op

I'm so sorry for your loss, this is absolutely unacceptable.

I would instruct a solicitor firm that does both human rights work and med negligence. You don't have to make a claim for compensation if you / his next of kin don't want to, but I would instruct a representative.

This is the kind of death that should trigger an inquest, and the state should act on its own motion but the family are treated as 'interested persons' and are allowed to have a legal rep to raise questions and challenge evidence. They will be able to ask questions you haven't even thought of. Depending on the evidence found at inquest, this may or may not open avenues to other types of action if you decide to go down that route. I've sat in many inquests and I really believe the family is better served by having someone there to look after their interests. The coroner will be mindful and respectful to you, but a legal rep will serve you.

I would also outsource complaints etc to said representative, if things change and you feel like you're being fobbed off or not getting the outcome you wanted it's important everything is done correctly from the start so you don't close off other avenues.

Actually my MP helped with an issue I had with my DC - battling with the hospital over a referral for which we’d been waiting for 3yrs and been given the brush off. I had a phone-call from the CEO of the NHS trust within 48hrs of contacting my GP, and an appointment a week later. It was a MH issue that had taken on life threatening consequences.

I absolutely WOULD contact the MP in this scenario as they have access to people that PALs will not have and, frankly, this is a legal negligence case in the making, so is very serious. It means that local services are/have put constituents’ lives at risk and is totally within an MP’s remit to be actively involved in.

That’s devastating for you and your family, I’m so sorry for your loss😢 I lost my brother suddenly earlier this year and it’s such a hard thing, I’m sorry you are going through it too.

The questions you have and what ifs must be awful and it’s only right your concerns are heard.

There will be an inquest and the coroner will consider the medical response as well.

Definitely start with googling Pals for the relevant ambulance service and go from there.

I’m so sorry to hear this. I know paramedics and they say they’re waiting at hospital to offload their previous patient and are so frustrated hearing they need to be at calls like this.

I now think I’d drive anyone in an emergency to hospital, which you’re not meant to do but it’s better than waiting.

Your poor brother, it’s awful.

I read that chest pains would be Amber coded, that's category 2, should arrive within 30 minutes. How old was your brother, OP? I'm sorry for your loss. x

We had a similar experience with my grandmother. Ask for the death to be referred to the coroner - in my grandmother’s case, there will now be an inquest. Where things like this happen, the coroner can issue prevention of harm notices to the health board if their failings were found to be a contributing factor in the death. Which clearly in your case, they were. I’m very sorry for your loss.

Sorry for your loss. The current state of the NHS is genuinely frightening. A friend of mine recently waited hours for an ambulance when he had a heart attack and this was in a major city. Luckily he survived. I would suggest contacting your MP as well as the ambulance service

I'm impressed. I work in mental health and an mp getting involved would make no difference to how soon someone was seen as it's all determined by clinical need.

Adults is not my field, but I’m sorry for your loss and hopefully this may help?

Sadly a lot will depend on what the person who called 999 said at the time. They triage according to very rigid parameters so if the right trigger isn’t given then it affects what priority the case is. I would make an FOI request for the 999 call recording as a starting point. Also, it will depend on how busy the ambulance service is - a category 1 ambulance (lights and sirens, immediate response) would generally be sent to an active cardiac arrest but if he was experiencing non-specific discomfort he might only have been given a cat 2 or 3.

So: make an FOI request to the ambulance service requesting the call recording, their OPEL status at the time in question, what category he was prioritised as, and what the wait was for each category on the day.

In terms of being informed - the addresses on drivers licenses are so rarely up to date that it’s not really something we’d use as a means of getting in touch with families. You say you were not informed - are you the next of kin? If not, was the next of kin informed and just didn’t pass it on or was nobody notified? Sorry to ask but we get a lot of angry family members wanting to know why we haven’t been giving them updates and actually that information has been shared with the next of kin who have chosen not to pass it on. If we knew their name we’d reach out to the next of kin listed on their medical information, or use the ‘emergency contact’ function on their phone. If we didn’t have either of these then it would be for the police to contact family members as it’s outside our remit.

i’m so sorry for your loss. The state of our NHS and Ambulance services are just not good enough are they :(

TBH I was impressed too. Was not a popular Tory Minister but he was an absolutely brilliant constituency MP. Was sad when they redrew the constituency lines and we lost him.

Regarding the 45 minutes to get to hospital after the ambulance arrived - I am not a doctor but if they tried to revive him 5 times before setting off, the chances are that he was sadly already beyond saving when they arrived.