The system is so badly run that 999 calls are going unanswered and people are lying unattended for hours
In more than 20 years working in NHS ambulance services as a paramedic, I have never seen response times to 999 calls as bad as they are now. I recently attended an incident in which a woman had fallen over. It was classed as a category C call, requiring an ambulance to get to her within two hours, because the nature of her injuries was unknown. However, by the time we arrived she had spent six hours lying outside in the rain, unable to move. She had a fractured hip and mild hypothermia and she couldn’t move, which was degrading for her – all thanks to an ambulance service that really doesn’t care about its patients.
Why are ambulance response times in so many parts of England so bad? Can we blame it all on Covid? Or is it perhaps a more chronic problem, because the ambulance service hasn’t employed or retained enough staff? In my view, it’s clearly the latter. So many staff are leaving that ambulance services can’t train new staff quickly enough to replace them. The number of calls has increased massively – and the system just can’t cope with the call volume, and can’t reach patients in time. We have a situation where the public has unrealistic expectations – that the service has no hope of meeting – about how fast an ambulance can reach someone.
The Secret Paramedic works for an NHS ambulance service in the south of England
