...the firefighter, who lives in Pontypool, was left aghast after ringing 999 only to be told there were no ambulances available and none would come to help.
Instead the call handler reportedly told Nicole to ring an out-of-hours GP and book a taxi to transport the pensioner to hospital, before hanging up in order to 'answer other calls'.
'I couldn't really believe what I was being told,' said Ms Lea, who's been Melvyn's principal carer since he lost his wife Maureen to Covid in 2020. 'I was expecting a long wait for paramedics but never thought I'd literally be told, "We have nothing to send, you'll have to find alternative transport".
Alternative transport that would have killed him, at that:
'I ended up, with my partner and mum's help, getting him onto a plank of wood and into the back of the van we bought to transport our dogs.
'To make matters worse, when we did get him to hospital the staff there told me that had we followed the advice we'd been given over the phone, he could've died.
'They told us that had we sat him up in a taxi the break in his hip would've likely ruptured an artery and been catastrophic for him.'
And who is being sacked for this gross dereliction of suty, you ask?
Lee Brooks, Executive Director of Operations at the Welsh Ambulance Service, said: 'We are sorry to hear about Mr Ryan's experience, it is certainly below the level of service that we aim to offer. 'Really? Really...?
'Our business continuity plans are drawn up to enable us to attend to the sickest patients first, while patients whose condition is less serious may sadly have to wait longer for our help, or be advised to make their own way to hospital.'
He was an 89 year old with a broken hip and he could have died. What the hell is there to 'understand' about that?
'We invite Mr Ryan and his family to get in touch with our Putting Things Right team so that we can investigate the situation and better understand their experience.'
How about we break your call handler's hip and leave them to the tender mercies of your 'service', so they can 'better understand the experience'..?
5 comments:
Nothing. nothing will happen until the incompetents on the front line and, especially, in senior management (in all the UK's second-rate outfits both public and private) lose their jobs and pensions for being totally useless! The first job of the "Putting It Right" team should be to seek out the call handler and each individual comprising the hierarchy directly above him/her, right up to the Chief Executive . . and fire the lot.
Predictable! (and nothing new).
In the “good old days” management and office jobs, like control centre operators/dispatchers, were jobs that older and experienced, or injured, staff ended up in. Now (and for many years) they are the place that the incompetents, the brown-noses and … ‘ethnics’ and women who are incapable of doing the job get to sit comfortably in (whilst those older and injured men now just get dumped). After all some twenty-something incapable know-nothing using a ‘smart-system’ (where they don’t understand, or can even pronounce, the complex conditions and ramifications) and have no experience of ‘doing the job’ are just as capable – meaning cheaper – aren’t they?
Another effect of ‘equality’ has been the reduction in available vehicles. Whilst your average woman paramedic can be ‘technically’ as good as any male, they are simply incapable of doing most of the job i.e. lifting and carrying patients, so … a male only crew ‘must’ be sent to ‘help’ (meaning two vehicles used to do a job a male crewed service would use one for, and … the men get to do most of the work whilst the women get the same money, and promoted. And remember there are fewer and fewer men as priority is given to women/ethnics).
Remember, the emergency services “are required” to hire and promote women and ethnics whether or not they can do the job, so posts like this are almost exclusively filled by them i.e. the people least capable, knowledgeable and experienced get to decide priorities (whilst sitting in well-remunerated, air-conditioned/heated luxury sinecures).
(We’ll gloss over the prioritising of certain demographics, where women, ethnics and perverts/mentally ill get ‘bumped up the list’ whatever their injury. Don’t believe me? Try it, seriously, call in identical injures, just make one a female ethnic gay, and the other a white male pensioner and watch the massive difference in response).
“Equality” rather than increasing the number of crews, halved them (at least) and ensured only the most useless incompetents get to decide whether you, and your loved ones, live or die. Remember that when you read, yet another of, these stories.
@Umbongo. What do you mean, 'nothing will happen'? Lessons will be learned...won't they?
@Anonymous
Yes, I forgot that. Accordingly, we can all relax . . . until the next time.
"Nothing. nothing will happen until the incompetents on the front line and, especially, in senior management (in all the UK's second-rate outfits both public and private) lose their jobs and pensions for being totally useless!"
That's never going to happen, is it?
"In the “good old days” management and office jobs, like control centre operators/dispatchers, were jobs that older and experienced, or injured, staff ended up in. Now (and for many years) they are the place that the incompetents, the brown-noses and … ‘ethnics’ and women who are incapable of doing the job get to sit comfortably in..."
Spot on! This is the main cause of many of these stories. I've spoken to 999 call handlers several times (never for anything life-threatening) and the last time I did, I was struck by how very little they seemed to care, compared to years ago.
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