> “East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) apologised but found the 999 call was handled appropriately.”
That has to be the worst apology in the history of apologies.
Edit: To clarify, I’m not condemning the NHS or call handlers.. or even claiming an apology is necessary. I’m saying the wording of the actual apology given is awful. Maybe “to the best of our ability..”
Terrible story. They should have advised the patient to make their own way to A&E if they were aiming to get to her after 2 hours. Getting in front of a nurse with some oberservations done would have helped.
I think we’re at the stage that if you’re not bleeding and don’t have some injury that will kill you if you move.. Call a taxi and an ambulance at the same time and just get in the one that comes first.
It’ll be the taxi 9 times out of 10, I imagine.
Once again nobody reads the article.
She called 999 and was told they would NOT send an ambulance and she had to A&E on her own because based on her symptoms she was deemed to not be in a life threatening situation.
She chose to instead ignore the advice to go to A&E and tried to reach her GP.
The only fault here is her own.
NHS is not fit for purpose.
I had a wisdom tooth extraction that was botched and led to infection. Was LAUGHED AT when I begged for an emergency dentist appt, told I was being dramatic and it was physically impossible for it to be infected. Called multiple times with ‘worsening condition’ until I was told not to call again, they would say the same thing.
Went to the local A&E, waited for 2 hours only to discover the receptionist had never checked me in.
When I finally saw someone at 4am, was told they didn’t deal with dental issues and to call 111 again.
Eventually I had no choice but to see a private dentist. They called an ambulance for me as soon as I walked in. Spent a week in hospital with sepsis. Almost died.
If I couldn’t have afforded the private dentist (£600) and had died of sepsis, I’m sure I would have gotten a nice little apology like this.
But they are creating 16000 houses for refugees and asylums despite cost of living, inflation and lack of budget to improve the NHS and transport for UK citizens. Poor asylums and illegals, going to live the comfy life now with our tax money while we die in the A&E or end up homeless.
Why was she sitting around for 3 hours unable to breathe properly. She had someone with her. I honestly don’t understand why they didn’t take her to A&E or get a taxi
At least she can enjoy another 2p off income tax. The plan is really working for her.
Interesting use of the word “correctly”:
> The caller was correctly advised, via a pre-determined script, that from the information gathered this was not an immediate life-threatening emergency and we would not be sending an emergency ambulance.
What they mean is that their procedures were properly followed. However, the advice that the condition was not life-threatening, was in fact, clearly not “correct”. Nothing here implies that said procedures are fit for purpose either. In fact there is some evidence to the contrary.
This is what happens when you starve the NHS of the funding it needs. Not enough staff, not enough beds, not enough places to discharge people into care. It’s a disgrace that this has happened in a wealthy developed country.
There was an old woman who fell and cracked her head on the concrete steps outside my mother’s work place once. The ambulance took 3 hours. Also East Midlands. Another man went into cardiac arrest and died waiting for the ambulance which took over an hour
Bloody Labour running this country into the ground.
>Mrs Keating, from Nottingham, said her brother would have taken her to A&E, if the call handler had advised this.
Awful, but with waits in this country you need to just take yourself. It’s a shame she has 2 adults kids and nobody took her and just waited for her to die.
Sad story, shame they didn’t think of getting a taxi or her son drive her to the hospital.
If you’re not a child you’re waiting.. unfortunately the service doesn’t have the capacity and politicians won’t understand this until they need one.
Our healthcare systems ability to triage care is shocking. I pretty much encourage anyone at this point to just take the reign or ask someone close to them to do it for them than go off the triage system. I would have asked someone to take me to A and E and just waited until I collapsed there instead and got the care.
And before anyone thinks it’s easy to say that when you’re not unwell, I almost died in hospital last month due to a surgical error on a routine surgery. The nurse ignored all the signs I was crashing and bleeding out even when I was crying saying something was wrong and I didn’t feel right. Then all the lights went out. I was discharged with no notes, missing medication, missing a follow up, and I’ve just been ignored by the admin team who don’t see my need as “urgent” to other patients. It wasn’t until I developed an infection 3 weeks later, threatened legal action they started providing paperwork and asking for follow up tests to be done.
I do not trust the admin, triage team etc. you know your body, it’s never worth waiting it out if you’re gut is telling you there is an issue. If id have gone off the departments triage service with aftercare, id not have the medication needed to rectify an internal bleed, scan to confirm bleeding had stopped or follow up, all because an admin staff member decided my case was not urgent
This isn’t the first time EMAS has been in the news recently for failing someone, who died as a result of no one responding in time, and it isn’t just one ambulance service that has struggled in recent years.
Part of the problem is interlinked though. Hospital capacity is stretched due to a lack of beds, lack of people being seen quickly enough in A&E, hospital wait times, etc.
Therefore, the ambulance can’t unload a patient who might be in need of emergency care, because there is nowhere safe to put them. They can’t just lump em and leave them at the ambulance bay, so they keep them on the ambulance where at least a parademic and rudimentary monitoring equipment is there keeping an eye.
This means that this ambulance can’t be freed up to go to the next emergency call. Now imagine multiple ambulances are like this. That’s a lot of calls now piling up because there’s no one to get to them in time.
I don’t fault the crew, and I imagine it is distressing turning up to the house after delays and finding you’re too late. It’s a structural issue at this point. I don’t fault the call handlers too, and I imagine it can be equally as distressing when a coroners inquest comes around you end up discovering a patient died on a call you handled despite it being coded correctly, because there wasn’t an ambulance to allocate.
“It added: “I can confirm that the first 999 call was audited and it was established that the outcome reached was safe and appropriate.”
I cannot imagine how angry I would be if I were that poor woman’s family. They consider her death to be a safe and appropriate outcome.
My sister was in absolute agony on Tuesday, sprawled out on the floor barely able to breathe and it must have taken everything for her to dial 999.
The operator wasn’t prepared to send an ambulance and told her to phone her GP as it was an issue for them to deal with. My sister had to beg for an ambulance.
It turns out she had sepsis and was literally at deaths door. She’s spent the last four days in ICU, and on Tuesday night we were told to expect the worst.
I put the blame for this squarely at the consecutive Tory governments and the policy of austerity for ripping the heart out of public services. How many people have gone through this and suffered much worse? More worryingly is the question of how long is it going to take us as a country to rebuild?
19 comments
> “East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) apologised but found the 999 call was handled appropriately.”
That has to be the worst apology in the history of apologies.
Edit: To clarify, I’m not condemning the NHS or call handlers.. or even claiming an apology is necessary. I’m saying the wording of the actual apology given is awful. Maybe “to the best of our ability..”
Terrible story. They should have advised the patient to make their own way to A&E if they were aiming to get to her after 2 hours. Getting in front of a nurse with some oberservations done would have helped.
I think we’re at the stage that if you’re not bleeding and don’t have some injury that will kill you if you move.. Call a taxi and an ambulance at the same time and just get in the one that comes first.
It’ll be the taxi 9 times out of 10, I imagine.
Once again nobody reads the article.
She called 999 and was told they would NOT send an ambulance and she had to A&E on her own because based on her symptoms she was deemed to not be in a life threatening situation.
She chose to instead ignore the advice to go to A&E and tried to reach her GP.
The only fault here is her own.
NHS is not fit for purpose.
I had a wisdom tooth extraction that was botched and led to infection. Was LAUGHED AT when I begged for an emergency dentist appt, told I was being dramatic and it was physically impossible for it to be infected. Called multiple times with ‘worsening condition’ until I was told not to call again, they would say the same thing.
Went to the local A&E, waited for 2 hours only to discover the receptionist had never checked me in.
When I finally saw someone at 4am, was told they didn’t deal with dental issues and to call 111 again.
Eventually I had no choice but to see a private dentist. They called an ambulance for me as soon as I walked in. Spent a week in hospital with sepsis. Almost died.
If I couldn’t have afforded the private dentist (£600) and had died of sepsis, I’m sure I would have gotten a nice little apology like this.
But they are creating 16000 houses for refugees and asylums despite cost of living, inflation and lack of budget to improve the NHS and transport for UK citizens. Poor asylums and illegals, going to live the comfy life now with our tax money while we die in the A&E or end up homeless.
Why was she sitting around for 3 hours unable to breathe properly. She had someone with her. I honestly don’t understand why they didn’t take her to A&E or get a taxi
At least she can enjoy another 2p off income tax. The plan is really working for her.
Interesting use of the word “correctly”:
> The caller was correctly advised, via a pre-determined script, that from the information gathered this was not an immediate life-threatening emergency and we would not be sending an emergency ambulance.
What they mean is that their procedures were properly followed. However, the advice that the condition was not life-threatening, was in fact, clearly not “correct”. Nothing here implies that said procedures are fit for purpose either. In fact there is some evidence to the contrary.
This is what happens when you starve the NHS of the funding it needs. Not enough staff, not enough beds, not enough places to discharge people into care. It’s a disgrace that this has happened in a wealthy developed country.
There was an old woman who fell and cracked her head on the concrete steps outside my mother’s work place once. The ambulance took 3 hours. Also East Midlands. Another man went into cardiac arrest and died waiting for the ambulance which took over an hour
Bloody Labour running this country into the ground.
>Mrs Keating, from Nottingham, said her brother would have taken her to A&E, if the call handler had advised this.
Awful, but with waits in this country you need to just take yourself. It’s a shame she has 2 adults kids and nobody took her and just waited for her to die.
Sad story, shame they didn’t think of getting a taxi or her son drive her to the hospital.
If you’re not a child you’re waiting.. unfortunately the service doesn’t have the capacity and politicians won’t understand this until they need one.
Our healthcare systems ability to triage care is shocking. I pretty much encourage anyone at this point to just take the reign or ask someone close to them to do it for them than go off the triage system. I would have asked someone to take me to A and E and just waited until I collapsed there instead and got the care.
And before anyone thinks it’s easy to say that when you’re not unwell, I almost died in hospital last month due to a surgical error on a routine surgery. The nurse ignored all the signs I was crashing and bleeding out even when I was crying saying something was wrong and I didn’t feel right. Then all the lights went out. I was discharged with no notes, missing medication, missing a follow up, and I’ve just been ignored by the admin team who don’t see my need as “urgent” to other patients. It wasn’t until I developed an infection 3 weeks later, threatened legal action they started providing paperwork and asking for follow up tests to be done.
I do not trust the admin, triage team etc. you know your body, it’s never worth waiting it out if you’re gut is telling you there is an issue. If id have gone off the departments triage service with aftercare, id not have the medication needed to rectify an internal bleed, scan to confirm bleeding had stopped or follow up, all because an admin staff member decided my case was not urgent
This isn’t the first time EMAS has been in the news recently for failing someone, who died as a result of no one responding in time, and it isn’t just one ambulance service that has struggled in recent years.
Part of the problem is interlinked though. Hospital capacity is stretched due to a lack of beds, lack of people being seen quickly enough in A&E, hospital wait times, etc.
Therefore, the ambulance can’t unload a patient who might be in need of emergency care, because there is nowhere safe to put them. They can’t just lump em and leave them at the ambulance bay, so they keep them on the ambulance where at least a parademic and rudimentary monitoring equipment is there keeping an eye.
This means that this ambulance can’t be freed up to go to the next emergency call. Now imagine multiple ambulances are like this. That’s a lot of calls now piling up because there’s no one to get to them in time.
I don’t fault the crew, and I imagine it is distressing turning up to the house after delays and finding you’re too late. It’s a structural issue at this point. I don’t fault the call handlers too, and I imagine it can be equally as distressing when a coroners inquest comes around you end up discovering a patient died on a call you handled despite it being coded correctly, because there wasn’t an ambulance to allocate.
“It added: “I can confirm that the first 999 call was audited and it was established that the outcome reached was safe and appropriate.”
I cannot imagine how angry I would be if I were that poor woman’s family. They consider her death to be a safe and appropriate outcome.
My sister was in absolute agony on Tuesday, sprawled out on the floor barely able to breathe and it must have taken everything for her to dial 999.
The operator wasn’t prepared to send an ambulance and told her to phone her GP as it was an issue for them to deal with. My sister had to beg for an ambulance.
It turns out she had sepsis and was literally at deaths door. She’s spent the last four days in ICU, and on Tuesday night we were told to expect the worst.
I put the blame for this squarely at the consecutive Tory governments and the policy of austerity for ripping the heart out of public services. How many people have gone through this and suffered much worse? More worryingly is the question of how long is it going to take us as a country to rebuild?