A seriously injured pensioner lay in pain on wet, freezing concrete for three hours before an ambulance finally arrived to take her to a hospital.
Ex-NHS nurse Pat McDonald, 75, suffered a broken wrist and other injuries when she slipped and fell outside her sheltered accommodation in Birkenhead, Merseyside.
Her worried family didn't want to move her in case it made her condition worse, so they called for an ambulance just before 1pm on Monday and waited three hours for one to arrive, the Liverpool Echo reports.
Following the incident, Pat's daughter Katie, a senior NHS nurse, has hit out at Boris Johnson's government with the NHS in crisis and A&E wait times now the worst since records began.
General Election 2019: Labour pledge to expand teams set up to tackle violent crimes
Medics call on Boris Johnson to take part in debate to 'prevent further harm to kids' health'
Katie, who rushed to be with her mum, said: She said: "This is not a criticism of the paramedics, they were fantastic when they arrived and really apologetic for the wait – I told them it wasn't their fault."
"This is the government's fault."
Pat, who has a number of health problems, was covered with blankets, clothes and hot water bottles during the wait until she was finally taken to Arrowe Park Hospital to be treated for her gruesome wrist injury.
Her daughter Katie, 35, who has been a nurse for 13 years, said: "There were four corridors full of paramedics waiting with patients – they can't leave them until they get a bed and there just aren't enough beds.
"Cuts and a lack of investment in our NHS means that wards are being closed all over the country because there aren’t enough nurses to staff them.
"That then means that there are fewer beds available in A&E and therefore our paramedics are stuck, waiting on corridors because they aren’t able to hand patients over to the nursing staff until there are trolleys available to put them on, sometimes for their entire shift.
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGE
"Can you imagine going into a job to help and care for people and then having to battle every day with no space to care for them, having the weight of 300-plus poorly patients in a department and god knows how many waiting for ambulances on your shoulders, constantly playing ‘who is the least unwell?’
She added: "All this just so you can make enough space for the next emergency on their way in, all the while thinking that you are letting the other patients down?
"And this is the result, elderly people in agony, cold, wet, unable to move and left for hours."
Katie said working conditions within the NHS have dramatically worsened in the last five years and staff need support from the government.
She said: "The pressures are unbelievable. There are nurses crying every day because they simply can't offer the level of care to people that they need.
"Shifts feel like jumping on and off a hamster wheel – often you go home and come back 12 hours later and the same patients are still there waiting to be seen."
It recently emerged that A&E waiting times are at their worst on record.
Less than 75 per cent of people who went to A&E in England in October were treated and discharged, admitted or transferred within four hours – the smallest proportion since the target was introduced in 2004.
Source: Read Full Article
