Elderly who fall at home unlikely to get an ambulance during strikes.

volver

Joseanne

dragonfly46

If you do fall tell them you have chest pain!

I thought that. Or a headache.
It could be a stroke.

Advocating lying to jump the queue now, are we?

Lt Eve is a paramedic I believe. I'll stick with her advice.

I have had to interact with the NHS more that I would like recently on behalf of relatives, and it makes me very angry indeed to think that people will try to jump the queue when ambulance people in particular are doing their best.

But volver, everything makes you angry.

DaisyAnne

volver

Joseanne

dragonfly46

If you do fall tell them you have chest pain!

I thought that. Or a headache.
It could be a stroke.

Advocating lying to jump the queue now, are we?

Lt Eve is a paramedic I believe. I'll stick with her advice.

I have had to interact with the NHS more that I would like recently on behalf of relatives, and it makes me very angry indeed to think that people will try to jump the queue when ambulance people in particular are doing their best.

But volver, everything makes you angry.

In this case volver is absolutely right to be angry, lying to jump the queue is so wrong, it means somebody in the position growstuff or Pittcity’s mum found themselves could die.

In this case, volver has every right to be angry.

Indeed Casdon it's very likely I would have died or, at the very least, been left with irreversible heart damage, if the ambulance hadn't arrived so quickly. It's not right that call handlers are having to prioritise and category 3 cases are taking so long, but it's not right either that people should lie about symptoms to get priority.

Incidentally, Steve Baker is going round telling people that this is the result of the strikes, but it's been happening for ages.

But volver, everything makes you angry.

Guess I'm just a social trend...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-63874001

At our football club if someone gets injured and you dial 999 you are most likely to be told an ambulance won’t come. I agree in most cases you can manage without an ambulance but not in all. This and ambulances queuing is pre strike.

I agree in most cases you can manage without an ambulance

Well seriously. Why are you phoning??

Just as an aside. I recently mentioned a non-urgent issue I have for which I got a doctor's appointment 10 days after I phoned for one. This morning I got a letter about a hospital appointment that has been made for me at the start of January. Not everything is falling apart.

My elderly neighbour, who is in bad health ,was ill yesterday and called 111 . They called an ambulance for him. This was about midday. The ambulance turned up at nearly 11 pm and explained that there was no point in taking him to hospital as they are now only admitting seriously ill patients, - seriously in danger of death. So the paramedics made him comfortable. gave him food, and will be informing his GP today.
How sad this all is. We just have to hope we don't need an ambulance.

Volver when it’s a sports injury the advice is not to move someone for example if it’s a leg break for fear of making it worse. If it’s concussion the person will need medical assistance but can be taken to hospital by private car. Not so long back an ambulance would come. Now it won’t. That was the point I was making. Nothing to do with strikes.

It’s not much better over here. The childrens’ hospital announced yesterday there was a 12 hour wait in the emergency dept. A long time if you have a very sick child. Life and death sometimes. Why is it ? It has never been like this in all the years I have lived here.

Terrible henetha. Scary really. Imagine waiting 12 hours for an ambulance whilst anxious. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

I’ve just been chatting to my stepfather on the phone. He told me that his 85y old neighbour ‘plans to say in bed all day on strike days’ as she doesn’t fancy ending up in a heap on the floor for a day.

25Avalon

Volver when it’s a sports injury the advice is not to move someone for example if it’s a leg break for fear of making it worse. If it’s concussion the person will need medical assistance but can be taken to hospital by private car. Not so long back an ambulance would come. Now it won’t. That was the point I was making. Nothing to do with strikes.

Understood 25Avalon.

I thought there were supposed to be rapid response teams to deal with people such as your neighbour henetha. What happened to them?

With all due respect, if the neighbour didn't urgently need hospital care, he was far better being at home with some kind of community surveillance. He didn't actually need an ambulance. It would have been far better if some kind of community medic could have come out and assessed whether he needed urgent care, leaving the ambulances for the life or death cases.

So, elderly people who fall won't get an ambulance, because they are on strike, they probably won't have family around because the trains are on stike, and even if they SOMEHOW manage to drag themselves to a hospital, they will get no care because the nurses are, oh yeah, on strike.

We are all struggling in this cost of living crisis and medical services at least used to be considered a vocation, not a J-O-B.

Get back to work and knuckle down, just like the rest of those who don't have rabble rousing unions have to do, to survive during this current mess.

Urmstongran Can I make a suggestion?

Stop watching GB News and reading the Telegraph. They are telling you things that aren't true.

I received an order today fairly quickly, courtesy of Royal Mail 🙂

So, elderly people who fall won't get an ambulance, because they are on strike
As I mentioned earlier, we probably won't notice the difference here anyway.

An 'elderly' friend had a bad fall at home; the ambulance did come eventually but then he stayed in the ambulance for 12 hours outside the hospital, waiting for a bed.

In the meantime, that ambulance and crew had to stay there with him and couldn't respond to any other calls.

Yes, Urmstongram, it's dreadful isn't it. I think maybe your stepfather's neighbour has got the right idea!.
I don't know about the rapid response teams, growstuff. Not sure if there is anything like that around here.... rural Devon.
But it sounds like a marvellous idea.
It's all very scary. I'm no chicken myself and had a bad fall last January. I've just got to make sure I don't do it again. As have all of us.

Urmstongran

So, elderly people who fall won't get an ambulance, because they are on strike, they probably won't have family around because the trains are on stike, and even if they SOMEHOW manage to drag themselves to a hospital, they will get no care because the nurses are, oh yeah, on strike.

We are all struggling in this cost of living crisis and medical services at least used to be considered a vocation, not a J-O-B.

Get back to work and knuckle down, just like the rest of those who don't have rabble rousing unions have to do, to survive during this current mess.

I wish I’d known it was still considered a vocation during my recent experience in an acute hospital ward which I mentioned in my earlier post. I could have told the nursing staff who were caring for my relative “surely you know this is a vocation and you shouldn’t be expecting to have better working conditions, just knuckle down and get on with it. So what if it’s 6 hours since you started your shift and you haven’t had a tea break because the ward is so short staffed. It’s a vocation you don’t need a break!”

A pay rise won’t solve the problem.

Urmstongran

So, elderly people who fall won't get an ambulance, because they are on strike, they probably won't have family around because the trains are on stike, and even if they SOMEHOW manage to drag themselves to a hospital, they will get no care because the nurses are, oh yeah, on strike.

We are all struggling in this cost of living crisis and medical services at least used to be considered a vocation, not a J-O-B.

Get back to work and knuckle down, just like the rest of those who don't have rabble rousing unions have to do, to survive during this current mess.

No, elderly people couldn't get ambulances before the strike. Funny the government wasn't making a fuss about it before now.

henetha

Yes, Urmstongram, it's dreadful isn't it. I think maybe your stepfather's neighbour has got the right idea!.
I don't know about the rapid response teams, growstuff. Not sure if there is anything like that around here.... rural Devon.
But it sounds like a marvellous idea.
It's all very scary. I'm no chicken myself and had a bad fall last January. I've just got to make sure I don't do it again. As have all of us.

Well, the government was promising rapid response teams last year ... maybe they're from the same unicorn land as the 40 new hospitals.

What do you do when an elderly neighbour calls for help? You are supposed to just cover the person with something warm and wait for the ambulance's pre-strike guidance.
Our neighbour fell in the loo his wife called us and DH went around covered him with a duvet and waited the hours until the ambulance arrived.
Are we really being asked to sit with someone lying as another poster says in their own excrement for hours? What if they are unconscious and on their front and breathing gets very shallow? Do you go against rules and turn them on their back and try and give CPR? OR put them in the Recovery position, and remove any false teeth so they don't choke on their vomit.
Maybe this Government after years of making a mess of things could at least give us some guidelines. As well as getting the strikes sorted ASP.
I have sat with a woman whose husband died in his chair and she would not leave him. The hours we waited were too long, Her anguish was unbelievable. We all might be in this position.

If they're unconscious, of course they need to go to hospital, but if they're just in shock, it would be far better if a rapid response paramedic could come out, check there's no concussion, broken bones or other injury and make sure they're settled with somebody around. That's far better for everybody than using an emergency ambulance and hospital bed.

My friend's elderly uncle, he's in his 80s, fell in town on Monday and hit his head and started to be sick, so it was very worrying. A shop keeper phoned for an ambulance to be told there wasn't one. A paramedic in a car arrived over an hour later and he called through asking for an ambulance and he couldn't even get one. A cafe owner ended up putting the man in her car and drove him to the hospital followed by the paramedic in his car. This is before there are strikes, what on earth will happen then.
Thank goodness for the help of those workers in the shops, bless them all.

We are visiting my mother in law at the moment.She fell five weeks ago.She wears a personal alarm which she used to summon help when she fell.Help arrived quickly but she was told there was a 16 hour wait at A and E so she refused to go.She is petrified of falling and spends all her time in her chair.She got dressed yesterday for the first time since she fell and says she won’t leave the house again.
She has a huge lump on her hip and is still bruised.Luckily most of the family live locally so she has daily visitors but it’s all so sad.