Ambulance waiting times
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Posts
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Three hours plus six ambulances waiting this morning. Feel sorry for ambulance staff baby sitting patients in ambulance rather than doing there main job. Wasted staff time and resources. An inefficient management running the service. Even after a and e move through to finding a bed for admissions real problem today. Few discharges over weekend so major backlog in discharge to free up beds. Certainly no issue with front line ambulance and a and e staff.
Issue is major backlog in discharge to allow nw addmitions. If no staff then wards can’t. Be opened. Process for training and staffing requirements needs addressing for holistic approach. Part of solution is a and e has to many people seeing this as a service instead of GP, lack of care in families to have members of families’ available to do home care rather than an admittance to a hospital bed. Multiple paper based recording of info.. No linkage between GP info and hospital.
It cannot be humanely right for people to sit in the back of a vehicle; ambulances were not designed for this. The sick and injured should be in a building, with people who can address their problems, and provide an environment to promote a positive mental outlook, and all the resources to hand to get the patient on the mend, and to a ward, or back home in their own safe place
Fully agree- waiting in an ambulance removes personal dignity for a patient. It is also completely unfair on ambulance staff who are often abused by patients and relatives because they are waiting in an ambulance. Abuse of workers in any situation should never occur but when it goes from thanks for the initial help to abuse for keeping someone waiting then that has to be wrong.
BBC News – Woman dies in ambulance at Morriston Hospital A&E queue
Sadly someone has died waiting in an ambulance queue in South Wales. How many more times will this happen before the Welsh Assembly acts. Neither the Ambulance staff nor the A&E staff are to blame the fault lies firmly with the Minister of Health and the poor management of NHS Wales finances. This long standing problem is well known, documented and yet no one in power is prepared to act.
If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of being in one of these long wait ambulances and talk with the paramedics you will realise that there are many solutions right under the nose of the management (both ambulance and Hospital)and that is talk to your staff. Get down to the doors of A & E and look for yourself to see what is really happening and the impact that waiting has not only on the patients but in the morale of excellent staff.
Management need to be at the front line and explain to patients and family members why they are not getting the appropriate attention.
Ambulance management should remove the warning signs in A & E informing their dedicated staff they only have 15 minutes to pass a patient over to the hospital even though there may not be any staff to do a transfer. Do the management really think their staff are wasting time hanging around — from what I have see on a few occasions they want out as soon as possible and there is no need for such warning signs.What a tragedy that a lady died in an ambulance outside A and E this week — how many more people will need to die before the stem is in place to cope with demand.
I’m not completely convinced that the Welsh Assembly alone is responsible for things like this. The article in question, refers to a woman who was transfered from one hospital to another for treatment. If this woman was this critical, should her condition not have been stabelised before being transfered and was there no phone call between hospitals to get a bed ready first? When my mum was transfered from Wrexham hospital to Glan Clwyd for Radiotherapy treatment, she could not leave until it was confirmed there was a bed available for her. Why was this not done in the case of the lady at Morriston hospital?
In terms of waiting times. I believe we, as people visiting A&E also have a duty to ask whether or not we need emergency treatment. Sometimes we do. But last year my son was admitted with scarlet fever and he spent 5 hours in the waiting room… there were 8 ambulance queued up as well. The waiting room was full of people with little cuts on their fingers, people with coughs and colds, things that should NEVER be in A&E and quite honestly shouldn’t even be in the GP surgery. We need to be seriously asking ourselves is our condition serious enough to warrant a trip to A&E. If people didn’t turn up at A&E with such minor ailments, the waiting times wouldn’t be so bad.
I also think that the triage nurse should be doing more to prevent the waiting times as well. She is more than capable of listening to someone’s chest to see if there is anything she can hear, and then recommending they see their doctor tomorrow. She is also more than capable of putting a plaster on a cut finger. She is supposed to be deciding who needs to be seen and who doesn’t. Perhaps her role should include telling people this is not an emergency, go home and see your GP tomorrow, thus freeing up more time.
@wrexview 15250 wrote:
BBC News – Woman dies in ambulance at Morriston Hospital A&E queue
Sadly someone has died waiting in an ambulance queue in South Wales. How many more times will this happen before the Welsh Assembly acts. Neither the Ambulance staff nor the A&E staff are to blame the fault lies firmly with the Minister of Health and the poor management of NHS Wales finances. This long standing problem is well known, documented and yet no one in power is prepared to act.
I generally feel it is important to highlight any failings by Welsh Assembly Government at every opportunity.
I would much rather it is abolished and the money saved put back into Welsh NHS and other important things ie not MotoGp circuits especially having witnessed the response to Anne Clwyd by Carwyn Jones.Unfortunately I agree we can’t lay the blame entirely on WAG as problems are featuring in the media from all over the country. This piece in The Spectator re London Ambulance Service is interesting as are the comments – no doubt applicable nationwide.
Revealed: why paramedics are fleeing the NHS » Spectator BlogsStill doesn’t stop us complaining WAG needs to be better – its no argument to leave it that others are just as indequate – after all one day it could be us ringing for an ambulance.
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