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

Sadly these incidents are going to become more common.

If only workers in this field had a way of highlighting the problems and trying to get government to do something about it.

The NHS isn't a quango, and I believe Pritchard is basically a Civil Servant. For someone who used to work in the health service you don't seem to know how this works.

Beyond awful Susan56. Sadly these incidents are going to become more common.

I have little faith in Amanda Pritchard, the deputy who took over the running of NHS England. She was given a 50% pay rise at the time of her appointment. Not a peep out of her. Another useless quango. The government should take this back ‘in house’. It costs the taxpayer a bluddy fortune and goodness only knows what benefits it brings.

Rosalyn69

A pay rise won’t solve the problem.

That’s what I was thinking!
Let’s hope none of us needs an ambulance on the strike days.
Anecdotes are all very well, but only any use for your own hospital or hospital trust. Care really varies a lot depending on where you are.

Urmstongran having a vocation does not mean open season for exploitation.

I’m the daughter and sister of NHS nurses and your comment is ignorant and insulting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”

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.

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.

Urmstongran Can I make a suggestion?

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But volver, everything makes you angry.

Guess I'm just a social trend...

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