Wow – a 2-year-old child having a seizure is 38th in the queue for an ambulance, and left fitting for hours? What is happening to the NHS and to this country?
Coming soon: Ambulances Direct! Your new express lane ambulance service. Brought to you by Sir Tory McDonor.
Let’s see
1. GPs telling people to call 111 because they’re busy, 111 then recommends an ambulance for people who don’t need one because the triage systems ignores patient history and thinks the patient needs an ambulance when they don’t.
2. GPs claiming not to be able to refer directly to hospital, and telling the patient to call an ambulance (in case you didn’t know, a GP can refer to almost any hospital department).
3. People calling an ambulance for a ‘check-up’ for a 10 year old condition, because they’re unable to look after themselves, and don’t want to wait more than 5 minutes to get through to their GP.
4. Regular callers who waste resources because they want their morphine or nitrous oxide fix, or who call just because they have nothing else to do.
5. GPs being overloaded trying to play catch up after covid.
6. The closure of hundreds of GP surgerys, and the under recruitment of GPs, has caused a large population to be registered at the same GP surgery. GP surgerys that have 30,000+ people on their books is going to take a while to get through to
This is what decades of austerity looks like.
A friend of mine had a cardiac episode from their prescription ADHD medication (they’re fine btw). The ambulance took 45 mins to get out to them. This is in shepherds Bush (zone 2) London. It was sheer good fortune that it wasn’t anything more sinister.
Bless them, they’re doing everything they can but they can only do so much with so little.
Its like one of those companies that are chronically understaffed. Its oksish, so long as nothing goes wrong. However, something always goes wrong. Thats just how the real world works.
Learn first aid people.
When I did my first aid course, the trainer said – the person you will use these skills on will most likely be someone you love…
My son was ill a few weeks back. Didn’t need an ambulance but they wanted to send one anyways… Oh look. There isn’t one available. You need to get him to a and e yourself.
Theyre underpaid, overworked, there arent nearly enough of them, and the hospitals can’t take the patients off their hands when they are actually finally able to do their job. Does that about sum it up? If you want one word: AUSTERITY.
I had a woman recently that had taken a substantial overdose to try kill herself. She didn’t want to come with us. Outside in the A&E car park. Called 999 and was on hold for 10 minutes, and then given a 23 hour ETA.
Chronically underfunded NHS. Tory’s making money from contracts and quietly selling the NHS out from under our noses. And that was happening before the pandemic.
Now we are hit with doctors surgeries not being able to see patients driving people in to a&e. Mental health patients who bounce back in and out because funding for mental health is an absolute joke. People just calling an ambulance because they can and ‘ they pay their taxes’ to come in, sit in a chair and walk away after a 6 hour wait with paracetamol that they could have bought for 19p from Savers.
On top of that. People who for whatever reason have not consented to covid vaccines.
I work in Critical Care and it’s utterly soul destroying at the moment.
Because a bunch of governments the New Statesman has supported have cut the system to the bone.
No ambulance for me either when I fell off my bike and broke my elbow last week.
Had a very badly bruised hip too. But had to push my bike home and ask my neighbor for a lift to A&E. 0/10 would not recommend
NHS have been magnificent otherwise, had an op with the week and was in and out in 5 hours.
5 years ago my Dad had an aneurysm, our local hospital is a 5 min drive away but at that point everything had already been transfered to a larger hospital 30mins away.
I was told my dad was not a priority (at the time it was a fall and he could not get back up). Was an hour by the time he was in the ambulance and while waiting for it his body was getting colder even though he was concious.
He never made it to the hospital. When I did get there the hospital was full of patients in the corridors. I can not begin to think what state the hospitals are in now when it was already bad years ago.
Right now it’s best to try and avoid having any kind of accident by being super cautious
Just last week I came across someone unconscious at a bus stop at 2am, suspecting he was hypothermic (it was 1ºc and he was just wearing a hoodie) I put my coat on him and called 999. I said ambulance and waited. Ten minutes of sheer panic, flagged a bus down, another passer by stopped, and 999 WAS STILL RINGING. He regained consciousness started walking and talking, refused a taxi so we got him someplace indoors.
I don’t care about your political opinions, calling 999 and having no one answer is a fucking terrifying state of affairs. I am not paying first world taxes to live in the third world.
14 comments
Wow – a 2-year-old child having a seizure is 38th in the queue for an ambulance, and left fitting for hours? What is happening to the NHS and to this country?
Coming soon: Ambulances Direct! Your new express lane ambulance service. Brought to you by Sir Tory McDonor.
Let’s see
1. GPs telling people to call 111 because they’re busy, 111 then recommends an ambulance for people who don’t need one because the triage systems ignores patient history and thinks the patient needs an ambulance when they don’t.
2. GPs claiming not to be able to refer directly to hospital, and telling the patient to call an ambulance (in case you didn’t know, a GP can refer to almost any hospital department).
3. People calling an ambulance for a ‘check-up’ for a 10 year old condition, because they’re unable to look after themselves, and don’t want to wait more than 5 minutes to get through to their GP.
4. Regular callers who waste resources because they want their morphine or nitrous oxide fix, or who call just because they have nothing else to do.
5. GPs being overloaded trying to play catch up after covid.
6. The closure of hundreds of GP surgerys, and the under recruitment of GPs, has caused a large population to be registered at the same GP surgery. GP surgerys that have 30,000+ people on their books is going to take a while to get through to
This is what decades of austerity looks like.
A friend of mine had a cardiac episode from their prescription ADHD medication (they’re fine btw). The ambulance took 45 mins to get out to them. This is in shepherds Bush (zone 2) London. It was sheer good fortune that it wasn’t anything more sinister.
Bless them, they’re doing everything they can but they can only do so much with so little.
Its like one of those companies that are chronically understaffed. Its oksish, so long as nothing goes wrong. However, something always goes wrong. Thats just how the real world works.
Learn first aid people.
When I did my first aid course, the trainer said – the person you will use these skills on will most likely be someone you love…
My son was ill a few weeks back. Didn’t need an ambulance but they wanted to send one anyways… Oh look. There isn’t one available. You need to get him to a and e yourself.
Theyre underpaid, overworked, there arent nearly enough of them, and the hospitals can’t take the patients off their hands when they are actually finally able to do their job. Does that about sum it up? If you want one word: AUSTERITY.
I had a woman recently that had taken a substantial overdose to try kill herself. She didn’t want to come with us. Outside in the A&E car park. Called 999 and was on hold for 10 minutes, and then given a 23 hour ETA.
Chronically underfunded NHS. Tory’s making money from contracts and quietly selling the NHS out from under our noses. And that was happening before the pandemic.
Now we are hit with doctors surgeries not being able to see patients driving people in to a&e. Mental health patients who bounce back in and out because funding for mental health is an absolute joke. People just calling an ambulance because they can and ‘ they pay their taxes’ to come in, sit in a chair and walk away after a 6 hour wait with paracetamol that they could have bought for 19p from Savers.
On top of that. People who for whatever reason have not consented to covid vaccines.
I work in Critical Care and it’s utterly soul destroying at the moment.
Because a bunch of governments the New Statesman has supported have cut the system to the bone.
No ambulance for me either when I fell off my bike and broke my elbow last week.
Had a very badly bruised hip too. But had to push my bike home and ask my neighbor for a lift to A&E. 0/10 would not recommend
NHS have been magnificent otherwise, had an op with the week and was in and out in 5 hours.
5 years ago my Dad had an aneurysm, our local hospital is a 5 min drive away but at that point everything had already been transfered to a larger hospital 30mins away.
I was told my dad was not a priority (at the time it was a fall and he could not get back up). Was an hour by the time he was in the ambulance and while waiting for it his body was getting colder even though he was concious.
He never made it to the hospital. When I did get there the hospital was full of patients in the corridors. I can not begin to think what state the hospitals are in now when it was already bad years ago.
Right now it’s best to try and avoid having any kind of accident by being super cautious
Just last week I came across someone unconscious at a bus stop at 2am, suspecting he was hypothermic (it was 1ºc and he was just wearing a hoodie) I put my coat on him and called 999. I said ambulance and waited. Ten minutes of sheer panic, flagged a bus down, another passer by stopped, and 999 WAS STILL RINGING. He regained consciousness started walking and talking, refused a taxi so we got him someplace indoors.
I don’t care about your political opinions, calling 999 and having no one answer is a fucking terrifying state of affairs. I am not paying first world taxes to live in the third world.