One woman described spending more than six hours on her 100th birthday, waiting in agony for an ambulance after slipping and breaking her pelvis while preparing for a family lunch.
Irene Silsby was to be taken by her niece Lynn Taylor to celebrate her centenary on April 9th. But she fell into the windowless bathroom of her care home in Gritham, Rutland, and staff called an ambulance at 9 a.m. after calling for help.
“All I remember is that I was in terrible pain,” Silsby said from his hospital bed Saturday. Asked about the delay in the ambulance, she said: “This is disgusting. I don’t know how I lasted so long, the pain was so strong. “
Taylor was expecting to meet with the ambulance as she arrived 45 minutes later. But when he got to the nursing home, the manager said he would wait 10 hours, she said.
What was supposed to be her aunt’s first outing in more than five months turned out to be lying on a cold floor, surrounded by pillows and blankets to keep her warm and suppress some of the discomfort.
Taylor, 60, recalls her aunt saying, “They don’t come to me because they know I’m 100 and I’m not really worth it anymore.
Taylor said she had never felt so scared, disappointed and worried. After calling 999 and expressing her indignation, she was told that life-threatening conditions were a priority.
“I thought he was going to die,” she said. “I didn’t think any fragile, tiny, 100-year-old body could endure that level of floor pain.
To distract his aunt, Taylor read aloud the card Silsby had received from the Queen, wishing him a happy 100th birthday. She said her aunt replied: “I bet she’s not lying on the floor waiting for an ambulance.
The incident was raised to critical around 3 p.m., and the ambulance arrived an hour later, Taylor said.
As they carried her up the small stairs of the nursing home, Silsby struggled to use the gas and oxygen provided. She had to wait another 35 minutes for a paramedic to receive morphine.
“I know why they had to do it because they are under pressure,” Taylor said. “Her pain going down the stairs just had to be because they had to move on to the next person, and I don’t criticize them for that.”
When Taylor arrived at the hospital behind the ambulance, she was not allowed in. In the days that followed, Taylor was still in shock. “It was such a terrible thing to happen,” she said.
NHS leaders said lives were at risk by waiting for an ambulance. Hospitals are under pressure as a result of unprecedented demand from patients after two years of the coronavirus pandemic, complicated by NHS staff shortages and social care, as well as declining beds in both locations.
Dr Catherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the Guardian this month that around 999 callers were waiting until 10pm.
In one case, a man died after waiting four hours for an ambulance. Another man was left in pain for 14 hours after calling 999 several times.
Taylor, 60, believes a series of governments have seen the NHS decline exacerbated by Covid and Brexit.
“There was no funding when we joined Covid, national health was not in a healthy, good way,” she said. “Before, we had Brexit, where we lost a lot of really valuable people working for the NHS, and I think there was a lot of strategic work for privatization that actually cost the service so much money that it broke it.”
Richard Line, separate director for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland at the East Midlands Ambulance Service, said each call was evaluated to ensure that people experiencing life-threatening emergencies, such as cardiac arrest, were seen first.
“We deeply regret that we were not able to arrive earlier and are aware of the suffering this will cause the patient,” Line said. “The patient remained in a safe place while waiting for an ambulance and clinical specialists from our ambulance control room were in contact with them.
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