Ambulance shortage

I do agree,Wwm2. Perhaps they should have paramedics on motor bikes who can do an assessment and then referr.
Hope you are sorted and feel better soon.

Went to hospital with Mum in the ambulance with Mum last week we had to wait for hours n the hospital car park as no space . I asked the ambulance driver wha they thought was causing the problem with handing over to A&E and they were adamant that according to them and hospital al staff it was the difficulty ( often the impossibility) to get a drs appt, so people were either just going to A&E or 111 were calling an ambulance. Hope all is well for you ?

I was under the impression you will be taken to your local A&E and left to fester there for 8 hours or so. Take a few books with you!

Do let us know how you get on.

Falling oxygen levels can lead to organ and brain damage so they will want you to be seen as quickly as possible before it gets worse. An ambulance will have oxygen on board plus other equipment in case of a sudden downturn. By the time you've seen a GP who decides whether you need to go to hospital and then you wait for an ambulance, you could be doing damage to yourself.

Best wishes...hopefully the ambulance will turn up soon.

Wishing you well, and hope you don't have to wait long.

They aren't usually 'ambulances' though. Here they send first responders who come in a car or on a motorbike and assess whether an actual admission needs to be made. Let us know what turns up for you though!

I hope you feel better soon x

JaneJudge

They aren't usually 'ambulances' though. Here they send first responders who come in a car or on a motorbike and assess whether an actual admission needs to be made. Let us know what turns up for you though!

I hope you feel better soon x

Yes, in this area, the Fire Service have a "responder" van and one of the fire fighters come out if there is any question of a heart problem. My husband used to do this and they would leave the station within 4 minutes of Control sending out the alert. He would have loved to have remained a "Responder" when he left the Fire Service but was unable to do so. Sadly that meant that all his training became a wasted resource.

Ambulance people have just left. Oxygen levels are better, but been referred for cardiology. They were here for an hour. They gave me the option of A&E. But I opted for a doctor to call to prescribe Anti-biopics for chest. And take all the readings to my GP when I’m better. See no point in spreading flu everywhere.

Thanks for your wishes.

Wishing you a speedy recovery Whitewavemark2 X

Best wishes WWM2 . Hope you feel better soon.

Hope the antibiotics work. I was actually going to ask if people were managing to get doctors appointments these days because two people in my village have had problems that should have been seen by a doctor and they were fobbed off. My neighbour hurt his toe and was just told to take ibuprofen and someone else, a very elderly man, had a sore on his leg that turned very nasty and he was told that the nurse at our practice should have done more. I think they just told him to stick a plaster on it. I’m going to phone our village PALS representative to see what she thinks.

Yes, get well soon, Wwmk2

P.S Are these anti-biopics a new medication or is it your computer thinking it knows better than you do when you write anti-biotics?

PPS This is not meant to be a passive aggressive enquiry... (See the current thread on reported posts...)

Hope you are soon feeling better. It's almost impossible to see a GP here. Telephone appointment in 2 weeks, maybe. I think that our surgery response would be the same.
This has been going on for years but the pressure of Covid seems to have brought things to a head. Years of underfunding, staff shortages, sickness absence. It feels as if health care has been dismantled over the last decade.

Sending you love and best wishes!
We need you here xxx

I should have said, "Get Well Soon!" Sorry, I was posting quickly.

Daisymae I do agree with you But not sure that it is just underfunding which has brought the Health Service to such a low level when compared with other european countries.
Money has been thrown at it but there seems to be no improvement. I really believe that there should be cross party reorganistion, based on a social insurance. It's no good going on about our wonderful NHS. It's time someone in government had the guts to say , right it's not working , let's look at elsewhere and see how they are managing so well, and then reorganise the whole system.

There have been two major overhauls of NHS systems and organisation since 2010. The changes cost millions plus many services are contracted to private providers. How have they improved things?

How would social insurance change things, unless everybody started paying substantially more? All that would happen is that people pay a private insurance company rather than the state.

Hope you start to feel better soon WWM . ?
We are led to believe wait times for ambulances are growing longer in our area (West Midlands) and if they take a patient to A&E there can be literally hours to get treatment. Not good.

My surgery have just reinstated booking appointments on line but when I looked, the only dates available were two weeks away to see locum or trainee doctors ( it is a training surgery so always has two or three doctors getting experience for a year). When I phoned, I was able to have a phone consultation the same day, this was totally fine with me as I wanted to discuss a referral to a consultant and did not actually need to see a doctor.

I have had several phone consultations but have not been offered a face to face appointment since before Covid.

I was not happy with having my blood pressure monitored over the phone as I was not sure of the accuracy of my readings. My meds were tweaked slightly as a result of my monitoring but only a couple of months later I had a TIA and my blood pressure was found to be sky high! I’m now on much stronger bp tablets, blood thinners and statins! I was lucky not to have serious side effects from the TIA although I have been left with reduced vision in one eye. I do wonder if I could have avoided having a TIA if my bp had been monitored correctly at the surgery.

Not sure if we are actually short of ambulances. I read the other day that they are being held up at hospital because they can’t hand their patients over and they can’t go out on the road again until they do.
Then when they are free again they just go out and deliver another patient to the queue.
Seems to be a lose lose situation for them.
Bit scary really especially if you are living it - like WWM2.

The boss of NHS England has instructed hospitals that ambulances should be waiting no longer than 30 minutes. There's a bottleneck in A & E, so that's going to mean putting patients on trolleys in corridors, often with inadequate staff care.

I was not happy with having my blood pressure monitored over the phone as I was not sure of the accuracy of my readings.

You can have these done at your local pharmacy usually if it sets your mind at rest.