Ambulance Waiting Times

Strumms

Folks,

what would the average waiting time from a 999 call being made, to an ambulance showing up be in Dublin ... ? yesterday early morning we’d an elderly family member collapse at home...and from the call it was about 47 minutes from the 999 call getting made to the arrival of the ambulance, ....there was justifiable panicking at about 25/30 minutes in, our family member was conscious but on the ground, unable to move and having difficulty communicating and considering there are two hospitals and three fire brigade stations within a single digit kilometer radius from the house, from an elderly person collapsing to an almost 50 minute wait just for their arrival seems weird....

the two Ambulance personnel were awesome btw... diligent, efficient, reassuring, thorough and professional...

but from an elderly person collapsing to having to wait the guts of one hour for an ambulance in a city suburb is not desirable.

mondeoman72

It depends completely on workload. I was passing by and attended a poor guy in the city centre at 1am who was pretty bad. I offered assistance to the Gardai who were there. They gladly accepted. We waited about 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. The DFB engine arrived before it. It was during the crazy scenes during lock down and it was Dublin 2. That was after several calls from the Gardai.

The crews that arrived were brilliant, just overloaded. Of course, it depends on the workload. Another time, I attended a drunk lying on the ground another night. It was an hour and a half on a Saturday night and then we cancelled it. He came around and we were able to call a family member to collect him.

GoProGaming

Hospital wards busy, which backs up A&E, ambulances can't hand over which backs up emergency calls. This means ambulances are tied up in a queue outside hospitals and not available for the next call.

The problem is nationwide.

mr cowen

very true, on that day in question there were 10 ambulances parked up outside Vincent's hosp. both NAS and DFB. plus there is the added complication of nearly 3 different hand overs to do, #1 to the lay person receptionist #2 to the covid filter nurse, #3 to the actual nurse you hand over to, who is no doubt doubling up on some other duty to cover a colleague having a flash lunch/toilet break utterly ridiculous, all in an open area, in ear shot of others....public,security, etc.., GDPR and patient confidentiality out the window..

Strumms

Luckily the patient is going to be ok, a week to ten days long hospital stay is predicted due to the relapse of an ongoing/treatable condition which is non life threatening anyway...tired, but in good spirits...

tired of collapsing in a heap on the floor at a mad hour in the AM and waiting for help for the guts of an hour. You’d be a bit worried if it was a stroke or heart attack, they also have a heart condition I was hoping wouldnt be triggered by the stress of the fûckin ordeal...

easygoing1982

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058201328/ambulance-waiting-times

Considering there was 2 hospitals within single digit km from you, providing there was no spinal concerns i would have and have lugged them in to the back of a car and drove up.

My circumstances were the person was semi conscious, in coherent and needed to be lifted in to back of car. Got my neighbours and pulled them in. Not very grateful but job done.

When I got to ED I asked one of the 4 paramedics smoking at the side of 5 ambulances parked up if they could help getting the person out. They actually scolded me and told me I should have called an ambulance. I said I had and it was 47 mins away. It took me 3 minutes to drive up. He laughed and said they were busy.

When I walked outside some 20 mins later the same paramedic was still there talking with now a bigger group of paramedics.

Contrary to the appearance of this post, its not a dig at the paramedics. I understand they have to have a break. But surely if large groups are standing at the back of ambulances smoking/chatting then that's large groups of paramedics unavailable to answer calls.

lawrencesummers

We have a health service thats barely held together by the underpaid and undervalued front line staff and over paid PR merchants.

you did well getting an ambulance within the hour.

imagine you lived a few hours from a hospital.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117848788#Comment_117848788

ill share your thoughts with my 80 year old mother, that she should be with arthritis of the want to get a man who literally couldn’t move, weights 75 kilograms, up off the floor, down a set of stairs, into a car and to a hospital..

KaneToad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117848802#Comment_117848802

I think this is an overused trope. The hard working 'front line' and everyone else in the organization nothing.

Plenty of people, in all grades, capable of doing SFA.

lawrencesummers

On your next hospital stay you can mention that to the nurse thats not had a break for 6 hours.

HeidiHeidi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117848788#Comment_117848788

I'm guessing (and only guessing) that those paramedics weren't actually "on a break", but waiting for their stretchers/trolleys to be returned before they could get back in action again. Ambulances seem to spend a lot of time out of circulation because of backlogs in the admission system in hospitals.

easygoing1982

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117853012#Comment_117853012

Fair guess and I obviously can't speak for them all but I can say the paramedic that helped me had their trolley in the back because they were going to take it out, then decided to get a trolley from inside. At least 2 other ambulances also had their trolleys on board.

G_R

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117853012#Comment_117853012

I've always wondered, is there a reason there isn't 10 trolleys sitting in a room beside A&E that the paramedics can take so they can get back on the road, and then once the hospital staff are done with the one the patient came in on, they just return to the room?

khalessi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117848788#Comment_117848788

Paramedics dont generally have breaks at hospitals, normally if they are there, it is because there is an issue handing over a patient or they are waiting for stretcher to be returned.

khalessi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117866120#Comment_117866120

Space, not enough personel for handover of patients, A/E overcrowded, loads of reasons

My mother had a stroke a couple of years ago (in her mid 60s) and the ambulance took slightly more than an hour in a city suburb.

We would have taken her ourselves but it was advised not to.

She got prompt care on arrival and access to very high tech intervention but unfortunately died 24 hours later.

While I doubt, given the scale of what happened, it would have made a hell of a lot of difference, I was totally shocked at how long the ambulance took.

I was ringing around frantically looking for a private ambulance to take her after it went about 45 mins and there wasn’t anything possible either and I probably ended up yelling at the 999 operator out of sheer frustration as they asked me all the same details over and over when I rang to query why the ambulance wasn’t appearing.

Honestly still furious about it and I will never vote for FG or FF ever again due to it. The health services are a perpetual shambles here and there is no excuse. There really isn’t.

All I could say is that in the event of an emergency I wouldn’t be confident that the service is adequate.

There simply weren’t enough ambulances on that day and the one coming was being routed all over the place as it was the only one available.

I’ve also had such bad experiences in A&E that you’d wonder if it’s even worth going. I went in to a major Dublin A&E with an older relative of mine (80s+, cancer issues, immune issues) who’d had a fall and needed checking out.

We waited from 4:30pm until almost 4am to be seen by a doctor and we were harassed by junkies, had a guy sitting next to us who kept unhooking his drip line to go for a smoke and leaving it trailing on the floor spilling whatever was in the IV absolutely everywhere.

A woman came in at about 2 am and threw a violent tantrum because she wanted benzos.

There were violent drunk people threatening staff.

There was also a very polite old man who kept keeling over (forwards) and nobody was checking up on him! He was being minded by other patients, not nurses - as they were so over run they weren’t anywhere near waiting patients.

It was hellish and my relative was saying if it happened again she’d prefer to just not go to hospital.

She’s also getting told by her department that in the event of an emergency with her chemo regime, she should go to A&E which is a complete joke of a setup given the situation she is in.

Our systems are woefully under sized and under resourced and they also don’t deal with antisocial behaviour.

Sorry if this is a bit of a rant but my first hand experience of the health systems in recent years has been just …

markpb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117866208#Comment_117866208

I'm not sure if it's much consolation but a friend of mine with cancer was told the same thing. The only time she did present at ED, she was brought straight in, no waiting in line for triage or anything else. She was assured this is the way it would always be for her.

Everything else you said is spot on.

Strumms

its an ‘emergency’ that’s why people are calling for an ambulance... what sort of gobshite thinks it’s ok that in an emergency it’s a thing where people should wait for an ambulance for 45 minutes...? Its to be noted to that between the last two censuses, the population of Fingal rose 8.1%... that isn’t healthy, more pressure on services, and will be influencing why people need to share services and wait long to receive them.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117867054#Comment_117867054

She hasn’t tested it (thankfully) but she’s extremely concerned about going anywhere near A&E because of her probably low immune system - a blood cancer than impacts her white cell production.

She was advised to wear a mask back in 2018, but the systems in reality don’t give a damn. They always just stuffed her into 3+ hour waits at outpatient clinics often in waiting rooms with no windows.

Things actually drastically improved during COVID, using off site clinics and precise appointments, but you’d think that would have always been the case, given she was at high risk of a bad outcome from plenty of transmissible diseases.

It appears to me that there’s been totally inadequate investment in the systems though. If you look at Dublin it’s a mess. Cork and Limerick seem to be in an even worse mess with inadequate beds and endless reports of overcrowded A&Es. Their populations are rising, yet nothing seems to be happening to expand capacity.

Instead we seem to have spent multiple billions on a children’s hospital and years arguing over the site.

There’s something very, very badly wrong and it is not being addressed and it’s been ongoing for as long as I can remember.

There was no golden age when things were better. The system was always barely functional for my entire life.

I distinctly remember a friend of mine from Germany who got pneumonia while here and was left on a chair in a corridor with an oxygen mask for 48h and that was back in about 2002.

What’s changed ?! Other than a few governments?

We don’t have a healthcare crisis. We’ve a chronic problem that’s been an issue for decades.

easygoing1982

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117866176#Comment_117866176

Good one. 😂

ylwambulnce

I'm going to be blunt. There is an ambulance crisis in this country at the moment. We're hemorrhaging staff. Sick leave is through the roof. We can barely keep vehicles on the road. Every day the amount of OT shifts that go out around the country is shocking. They send texts to staff in different provinces looking for cover in the likes of Dublin and other regions.

40-90 minutes is the norm these days for a response to life threatening emergencies, sometimes longer. When we receive a call on the MDT it tells us what time it was received in the call centre at, and often there is a 30-40minute holding time before a vehicle is even allocated. It's not unusual to respond to life threatening calls 2 or more counties away. Sometimes counties go without any ambulance on the roster for several hours, especially at night. Not all shifts are covered.

Morale is low. We're not entitled to lunch breaks. Every day we're made work 1-3 hours overtime. We work 12 hours straight driving hundreds of kilometers. I've worked night shifts where I was supposed to finish at 8am and am still on the road at midday.

If we voice concerns, or protest to the control centre we are threatened with disciplinary action. When the control centre rides us or **** up and makes a mistake they are answerable to nobody. The controllers and call takers cannot deviate from the set script, EVER. They have supervisors breathing down their necks.

The general consensus on the ground is the biggest mistake the ambulance service has made was closing regional control centres, and centralising everything. Now ambulances have no borders. All the county ambulances get sucked into larger population centres. The AMPS software is not fit for purpose. People are dying because they classify nonsense calls as more important than serious ones, again because the script is gospel and they are not allowed use common sense. Its a computer says no scenario. It's a system designed so nobody takes accountability for it's failings.

The response times and statistics are fluffed and skewed. It's a game of stopping the clock. Yes, an ambulance was dispatched to your granny having a stroke in Galway within 90 seconds, but nobody tells you it's coming from Athlone.

At the hospital it's the norm to be waiting 2 hours or more with your patient, often in pain and discomfort. The ED's are overcrowded, and back to pre-covid levels. And yes, lets not tip toe around the subject, of course we will take this opportunity to talk and de-stress with each other. It's not a break standing at the back of your vehicle shoving a cheap A&E sandwich down your gob, knowing full well if we clear with 30 minutes left to go on my shift I'll be forced into mandatory OT.

Burnout is real. PTSD is real. Bullying is happening. Corruption is rife. Upper management treat the boots on the ground with utter contempt.

It's prime time worthy stuff comparable to the scandals the Gardai have been going through in recent decades.

mr cowen

thats well said, I,ve spoken to NAS crews at hospitals around dublin and they are all singing the same song, no breaks, travelling miles and not getting a to a call, if they are dragged into the midlands they will be forgotten by their control and kept there...and the NAS are trying to take over dfb.s workload too, shambles.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117882275#Comment_117882275

Well said.

Strumms

@ylwambulnce

You call an ambulance when a person is seriously ill, injured or at risk of dying...

in an ‘emergency’ in other words. In that situation a reasonable percentage of calls will or could be life or death..life threatening as you put it... if your life is under threat... we need enough ambulances, enough staff, to respond to help in a reasonable and efficient timeframe.

interesting to hear that often staff need to forego breaks... that is not surprising! It’s Ireland 2021 but it’s neither safe non healthy for those staff. Staff who are being asked to look after the health and wellbeing of others are being shafted in their own quest for wellbeing in their job.

pms7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117687265#Comment_117687265

Yes, saw this happening. Shocking waste of resources to see 4 ambulance crews waiting in the hospital for a few hours.

If time is critical and you can get the person into a car, do not call an ambulance

mr cowen

https://youtu.be/h1WKKPX-t24

seems the norm in most countries

Strumms

We need to start prioritizing the health and wellbeing of Irish taxpayers.... and health professionals...

if we have xx millions a year to be facilitating non contributors just arriving... for a dig out / hand out?.we need to knock some of that on the head and focusing on OUR health...

if my dad was having a hemorrhage, stroke or heart attack he probably wouldn’t be alive now... thankfully he’s as of yesterday, home after another spell in getting finally fixed...

Yes, let's treat people differently. Let's suggest that every single Irish person gets health care before anyone who arrived here from somewhere else. Let's create a two tier society, where people can die because they are not Irish.

Now, how will we define Irish? Maybe if they can trace their family tree back to Brian boru? Also, should we exclude all new arrivals? Arrivals in the last five years? Maybe 25 years, just to be sure.......

It's only right, I mean Irish people deserve health care, why should anyone else think they have the right to be treated.

enfant terrible

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117882275#Comment_117882275

If I the caller in the emergency asked where the ambulance is been dispatched from, would the control room tell me or fob me off?

i.e I could make the decision to drive the patient to the hospital myself if I knew its an hour away.

Tripp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118163719#Comment_118163719

Yes if you asked we would tell you where it was coming from and an eta if we had that info at the time of you calling us

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118163689#Comment_118163689

I’m not suggesting treating people who ARE here any differently whatsoever.....or advocating a two year society, that’s a fairly randomly inaccurate interpretation. :)

I’m saying IF it gets to the stage where the country cannot provide safe, efficient and appropriate care to those who are here, such as extraordinarily long waits for ambulances and waits for care when you eventually get to hospital... then the door needs to be temporarily closed so that we can control our population and be able to provide efficient medical care, ambulances etc... to those of us here and paying for it. prioritizing our health and wellbeing.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118164766#Comment_118164766

Not at all.

the health service needs to be run better. There is plenty of money. It's a bit strange to suggest that hse inadequacies should be solved by banning immigration! Bit convenient for those old anti immigration advocates..........

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118164822#Comment_118164822

My focus is on the convenience and wellbeing of those of us here...

there simply isn’t plenty of money our population is just shy of 5.1 million, growing at a fast rate..

if writing a cheque was the answer....between 2011 and 2016 out population grew 3.7%.. between 2016 and now....do we just keep writing cheques, that money has to come from somewhere ?

if we don’t have the capability to look after those of us here, our health , something needs to give. If my dad was having a heart attack he could be dead by now.

There is plenty of money in this country, nothing to do with writing cheques, the money is there it just needs to be used correctly.

If you dad was having a heart attack, the inadequacies in our health system are not because there are a few immigrants in th country.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118165272#Comment_118165272

the inadequacies are rooted in the demand placed on it as much as incompetence in managing it...you just want us building hospitals, buying ambulances, hiring, training paying for all of that, ad nauseam ? Has to be a cutoff point.

source

The inadequacies are in the high salaries of consultants and mangers in the HSE. The inadequacies are in the overly heavy management structure of the HSE. The Department of Health is one of the best funded departments in the country at 22.2bn, second only to the Department of Social Protection at 23.5bn, the next biggest budget item is Debt servicing and EU payments at 13.92bn.

The DoH is awash with money compared to literally any other government department except DSP, there should be no reason they cannot provide a decent service with the funds available, even taking inward immigration into account. The issues are not with the numbers seeking the service but with how the service is run. There have been news stories for decades about the bloated health services in this country and the associated mismanagement, and that is absolutely no reflection of the hardworking men and women on the frontline every single day.

Closing our borders is the last thing to be done to fix this particular problem. We would be more in line to tell the unions to bugger off, tell a lot of the ineffective management and civil service side of the DoH to go with them and completely restructure the entire service. No more lip service and no pandering to ridiculous ideas that it's immigrants putting strain on our health service.

Strumms

It’s awash with money because it needs to be.

as the population grows at the rate of which it has the services can’t cope.

beds for rehabilitative treatments are like hens teeth. Also...

Sites for three new elective hospitals in Dublin, Cork and Galway are being sought as part of a €3.7 billion plan for the upgrade and expansion of the health service.

The hiring of 7,000 healthcare staff, to be based in the community, and implementation of a medium-term plan to reduce waiting lists are also sought between now and 2023. We’ll see how that goes... they should not have made decisions compromising the safety and wellbeing of Irish citizens/taxpayers that meant they'd have to implement them and implement their hands into ‘taxpayers’ pockets to fund it.

why ? Population growth is the main driver...

the main driver as to why people are waiting extraordinary times for ambulances.

Population growth is absolutely not why the ambulance waiting times are long, perhaps read the posts from actual ambulance drivers.

'compromising the safety and wellbeing of Irish citizens/taxpayers'

I'm afraid your agenda always shows itself.

Strumms

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118195376#Comment_118195376

My agenda is quite clear ....

value, safety and efficient services for taxpayers.

It’s population growth certainly... leading to A&E overcrowding, leading to ambulance shortages , i know ive been there....but why are a&e’s overcrowded ? why are we having to build and pay to build more hospitals? To try to keep up with the rapid population growth...

it will probably get to the point that you’ll only be taken to an a&e if it’s close to a death situation... otherwise it will be all on you to seek help privately.

source

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118196074#Comment_118196074

Well lets take Limerick as it is one of the most overcrowded hospitals in the country and also happens to be my hometown. Well, a while back (2009) the government thought it would be a great idea to close the ED in Nenagh and Ennis, to be replaced with "community health centres", these didn't materialise to the level promised and we're now left with a single ED for Limerick, North Tipp, North Cork, North Kerry, and Clare. That is the reason for the overcrowding in Limerick. They also closed the ED in St John's Hospital in Limerick City, now a minor injury clinic.

We've got a fantastic large new ED built in UHL, but the catchment area is just way too big because of government policy over a decade ago, not population growth. The hospitals are still there and underutilised. If they reopened both Nenagh, Ennis and St John's then you would find a lot of the overcrowding problems solved overnight.

Strumms

Reopen all those hospitals though, who pays for the reopening and the running ? The people who are being squeezed currently, who’d get first dibs on accessing services there...not those paying for the reopening, not however a good number of those who’d be first in line to need them

Shield

Mod:

@Strumms Enough of the suggestions that taxpayers ought to be entitled to preferential treatment of any government services. That’s not how emergency services work. In an emergency situation, if you need aid, you get aid, regardless of your status. You are free to open a discussion about this in Politics if you wish but this is not the place to continue that discussion. Please keep it on topic or the thread will be closed.

-Shield

mr cowen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118197697#Comment_118197697

I can only speak for the dublin situation, as Ive never worked A/E work down the country, I agree..closing hospitals without supplying a viable alternative such as specialist clinic is not a solution, but neither is bringing alpha and Omega classed cases to a busy emergency dept.

there should be a pathway directly to clinics such as sprain and strains, minor trauma, mental health, alcohol induced ambulance calls, and that could be done at a local community level.

these clinics can then be incorporated in doctors and nurses clinical placements, while they are studying.

ED E

It’s population growth certainly... 

Its not.

Its age. People think of ES going to road traffic collisions, builders chopping their hands off etc. The biggest part of what they do is elder care. There was a show about the NAS (https://tilefilms.ie/productions/paramedics/) but it was short lived. You can also see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09393rd .

There are frequent fliers that ambulances visit several times a week. Its an ineffective way of half caring for the elderly. We need to start building massive state run nursing homes. (Wont go further here in case its seen as politics).

babyboom

My 95 year old mother was found delirious by her carer one morning a few weeks ago. We called an ambulance. They took four hours to arrive, said there was nothing wrong with her and left. The crew were very nice but just didn't want to know. I managed to get her to the gp the next day with help from my brother, who had to come up from Kerry. She was horrified that they hadn't taken her as she could have had sepsis. She's since been admitted to hospital. I've had to call the ambulance service several times over the past year or so for her and they've been pretty prompt at arriving, bit that experience was awful. They are dealing with a huge amount of elderly people and it's definitely contributing to waiting times etc.

mr cowen

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118200368#Comment_118200368

sorry to hear that, but did you not contact your gp first at a local level and get them to do a house call and access their patient and see weather the emergency dept. is the best place for her, maybe she could have been treated at home in the comfort of her own bed.

sometimes people can be waiting more than 4 hours in the emergency dept just to see a doctor even if the ambulance response was prompt.

babyboom

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118200414#Comment_118200414

The gp won't do house calls at the moment and I can't get her there without help as her mobility is very much impaired. I'm the only one in Dublin which is why the brother had to come up the next day to help. She thought my son had killed me and that she was still I'm the morgue identifying my body.

Chiparus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118200292#Comment_118200292

They tried that in the UK, it does not work,

Thousands have died through reconfiguration , hundreds of lives have been saved.

mr cowen

really, i wouldnt have thought so, surely to god the answer doesnt lie with piling every non emergency into an over crowded A/E

Shield

Mod: Off topic posts deleted. Keep it on topic or the thread will be locked.

kala85

If I needed an ambulance and couldn't get one from the HSE, could I call a private ambulance in an emergency and how much would it cost.