Widow’s husband had 95% chance of survival if not for ambulance delays, investigation finds

9 comments
  1. I am particularly annoyed at something rarely talked about – the poles that are fencing the cycle lanes. In my town, they are spaced too narrowly, so when an ambulance needs to come through during high traffic, cars have no way to pull in and make way.

    I have seen several times that ambulance had to wait minutes for the traffic to clear out to go through. Without these poles it would probably take a few seconds.

    Now I don’t mind that cycle lanes should have protections from stupid drivers, but when it comes to situation where ambulance cannot go through are these poles actually saving lives?

    Are there any studies about their effectiveness or was it just based on a hunch and way to give contracts to mates?

    Some councils were replacing them several times, someone made a lot of money.

  2. So many comments have obviously not read the article. In brief:

    > The North East Ambulance Service investigation found:

    > Ambulance took 49 minutes 49 seconds to arrive despite the target for ‘second category injuries’ being 18 minutes.

    > Police at scene and off-duty trauma nurse repeatedly called to say his condition was getting worse but this information was not taken on board.

    > An ambulance was not allocated to Aaron until 25 minutes after the first call.

    > Ambulance crew from third party company could not operate the sat-nav system and did not know the way to the nearest hospital when Aaron was in cardiac arrest – asking his wife for directions.

    > At least six calls were made from the scene – one from a police officer requesting an ambulance ‘on the hurry up.’

    > Ambulance arrived at scene in Esh Winning at 1:21, redirected from route to RVI following Aaron’s cardiac arrest, didn’t reach Durham hospital until 2:14pm.

    > There were shortages of operational staff, and on the day in question they were 31 staff members down.

  3. “In everyone’s best interest we decided to reduce the service and funding even further ” – Tory Scum, probably

  4. Ambulances don’t turn up, police don’t turn up, my bin men don’t even turn up half the time. Why are we even paying taxes at this point?

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