Ambulance staff will go on strike soon

I'm not surprised!

We have known, the government have known, for a very long time, what's coming this winter and the ambulance crisis.

Nothing has been done: if anyone thinks it has, then it will be good to hear?

Had anyone watched the documentaries on their work? Let's get behind them. A far as I'm concerned, they are striking for us not against us.

Here here Wyllow3

‘Hear, hear’. Autocorrect foils me again

Another failure of this hopeless Tory government to resolve yet another NHS crisis. People will die as a result of an ambulance paramedic strike. You can't simply replace ambulance staff with squaddies - the soldiers don't have the paramedic skills: staff are not simply drivers and stretcher bearers.

Our ambulance service is under such pressure they certainly deserve a pay rise. The time an ambulance can sit waiting at A&E is just a ridiculous waste of time.

The quickest and most effective way to end the strike would be for the nation as a whole to get behind the ambulance crews and support them.

The government are relying on the public shaming the staff instead of them. I know there are no easy solutions - but these problems have been clogging up the pipeline for a very long time now and government appears to be doing very little to deal with the issue. The major problem seems to be the lack of beds (not to mention staff) - beds that are 'blocked' by patients being fit for discharge, but needing a care-package and none being available. The cottage hospitals have gone, there are precious few rehabilitation spaces available... none of this is new, it's been like this for ages, but social care has been kicked into the long grass - again.

The problem is huge, its impact devastating - and we have a government focused on 'small-state'. Nothing will change until this mess is tackled head on.

I can very well remember the last time ambulance crews went on strike - June 1981. I was most concerned about my elderly parents, who lived about five miles from me telling them to let me know if they felt they needed to go to hospital and I would come over to drive them there.

Of course, they did not - but I put for the morning nap the two small foster babes I had, climbed up to pin up somethng, tipped the small cupboard I was standing on, fell with the corner off that cupboard hitting me hard. As I collapsed I knew I had done somethign serious as I actually felt all the blood leaving the surface of my skin as it rushed to (as it turned out), the kidney and lung I had severely damaged.

No mobile phones, somehow managed to get myself down the stairs, tried to telephone hubbie at work (took three attmpts to dial the number), then managed to call a nearby friend who rushed over to me. She rang my GP who also rushed round to me. He tried to get one of the emergency army - (green goddesses) ambulances but was told it was a three hour wait.

Eventually, he and my neighbour got me into my car and she drove it hospital. No triage there in A&E, and no external sign of injury - I was left. Only when hubbie arrived and actually grabbed one of the doctors and dragged them into my cubicle did action start, by then I could hardly breath at all.

I spent the next two months in hospital, and have realised since how fortunate I was to have survived that day at all.

Well said Wyllow3. I watch the programmes and can't praise them highly enough for all the work they do and under such pressure too. It's no wonder paramedics are leaving their jobs.

For those that do it, please stop blaming ambulance crews when they can't get to deal with call outs quickly enough.

Improving the pay of the ambulance drivers won't solve any of the problems the NHS is facing; though I have absolutely no doubt that their pay should be better. The same as all pay for NHS staff.

It won't prevent ambulances being unable to respond promptly to calls because they are stuck in queues at A & E waiting to discharge the patients they are carrying. The queues are there because the NHS has been kept short of funds since the tories first came to power in 2010 and immediately cut public spending. Exacerbated by Brexit when vital EU staff left the NHS to return to their homelands . We have a situation where there are bottlenecks and shortage of staff and beds all the way through the system, right up to being unable to discharge patients to free up beds because of the government's failure to address social care. The NHS, like other public services, is disintegrating because of political choices.

To restore it to its former state is going to be a mammoth task and require state investment which, despite what we are told, would be perfectly affordable and even boost the economy.

In the meantime, people are dying in ambulances and because of huge waiting lists for treatment. Staff are leaving in droves or going sick with stress related illness, when we have neglected to train sufficient people to replace them

It feels as though the government has abandoned us.

Wow Franbern what a day for you, hats off to your DH for knowing it was serious, but the hospital staff should have known it too.
Good comments Dickens 👍🏻
If anyone can get into a car with an emergency then that’s what we will have to do.

If anyone can get into a car with an emergency then that’s what we will have to do.

It won't do anything to help the hours and hours you'd have to wait in A & E to be treated. Or the hours spent in a corridor, on a trolley, waiting for a bed to be free if you have to be admitted.

The whole NHS is falling apart and it's nothing to do with 'excessive waste' or 'too many managers', or whatever else people like to pick on. It's shortage of money and criminal government failure to plan. It's 'leave it to the markets' and 'people will pay if they're desperate'.

We’ll said maizieD
I’m eternally grateful to the ambulance staff, nurses and doctors who cared for my husband (and his family) in the final days of his life. Grateful to the ancillary staff who were so thoughtful and kind. All this at a time when the pressures they work under were so
Obvious
Shame of twelve years of austerity destroying public services

You’re right MaizieD it won’t, but if you need to get to a hospital fast and there isn’t an ambulance to be had then that’s what you have to do.
Your case will be triaged when you get there, if it’s really serious, like heart attack or stroke or a serious bleed then you’ll not be waiting all day on a trolley.

MaizieD everything you say is so correct. Nurses, ambulance crew and other NHS staff having to go to Food Banks in order to feed their families. Disgusting!!!!

These strikes are being caused by a government who thinks that applauding these workers is fine, but paying them anything even approaching a living wage is a NO, No!!! They, thmselves are fine and award themselves large increases and ofrten more in expneses than a nurse or paramedic actually recieves for working.

So many currrent deaths and future ones need to be laid fairly and squarely as the fault of this uncaring, self-profit making government.

Grantanow

Another failure of this hopeless Tory government to resolve yet another NHS crisis. People will die as a result of an ambulance paramedic strike. You can't simply replace ambulance staff with squaddies - the soldiers don't have the paramedic skills: staff are not simply drivers and stretcher bearers.

There are emergency medics in all three of our armed forces. Highly trained and able.

These will be deployed to the ambulances.

Won`t make any difference here you can`t get an ambulance anyway.

It isn’t all ambulance staff btw it depends on which hospital trust they work for.
GrannyGravy13 that’s right, they can use army drivers to drive ambulances and army medics on board if they need to.
Hope it won’t come to that.
Hope all NHS staff will accept a reasonable wage hike, and then no strikes at all.