The NHS is struggling, please think before you call upon its services28 Dec 2020 00:01
From a member of staff in London Ambulance Control.
When I left work at 7am this morning we were still holding 400+ calls across London that were waiting for ambulances. FOUR HUNDRED. Let that sink in. That’s just within the parameters of the M25, four hundred people were wanting help.
Help that isn’t available. Our oldest call, one of the sickest patients in London had been waiting for 17 & a half hours & there was still no ambulances available to send.
Why? Because ambulance staff are not immune to covid- lots of our workforce are off sick, or self isolating, or grieving lost loved ones. Patients who are calling us with mild symptoms, wanting to be ‘checked over’ or have a covid test (which we DO NOT provide by the way) are unnecessarily exposing & infecting us. Which in turn is wiping out our frontline workforce, meaning we can’t be there for our sickest patients when they need us.
We are waiting at hospitals with sick patients in the back of our vehicles for HOURS, as the hospitals do not have any beds, they are full to the rafters. The emergency calls are stacking up, but all the ambulances are waiting at hospitals to offload their patients.
When I walked back into work tonight, there were still 494 calls outstanding-it is simply relentless. It is not going to get better any time soon. This is so much worse than the first wave.
This post isn’t about how hard I am working, it’s my job. I don’t want credit for it, I am lucky I still have a job to go to. It’s simply to make you aware of how bad this situation is. The photos may give you a visual of how out of control this situation is. Ambulances stacked outside hospitals, screen after screen of calls to trawl through, calling each one back to apologise for the delays, trying to pick out the REALLY sick ones to prioritise. Praying you don’t miss a patient that has deteriorated so much that they’ve died at home before we were able to reach them. That’s our reality.
A lot of us in the ambulance service are spending Christmas away from our families & loved ones because we’re scared of infecting them. But I really hope that if you didn’t follow the tier 4 restrictions today and made poor choices about being with loved ones, that if you or your family get sick in the new year you don’t need an ambulance, a hospital bed or a ventilator. Because there won’t be one available.
Imagine that, calling 999 because you are in a life threatening situation & nobody available to come & help you. Terrified? You should be.
Do the right thing.?
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