All Our Systems Are Broken

Or should that be ‘cisterns’ ? See the end of this post.

We’ve just had a stressful but interesting and eye-opening week. An insider view of the NHS in Wales.

We see all sorts of things on TV, but it’s often only when we experience it for ourselves that the full impact of the situation comes home to us.

So in the last week we have:

….. waited at home for an ambulance – with a paramedic in attendance – for six hours. During those six hours, the paramedic gave us an insight into his working life. He kept us updated throughout the afternoon, letting us know that there were 10 ambulances waiting outside the accident and emergency unit 20 miles away, and until they could discharge patients into hospital, there would not be an ambulance available for us.

(He had arrived at 1.30 pm, following a visit from the GP earlier in the day who had recommended a trip to hospital. The paramedic was a highly trained professional who could have been doing something else during those 6 hours).

In the end it was the local GP ambulance that arrived at 7.30 pm.

…. waited 10 hours in an ambulance outside A&E. Once more with the ambulance crew having to be with us throughout. They said that they expected the same to happen the next day. It’s not unusual for them to spend a whole shift waiting in this way. Once more, a tragic waste of human resources.

… waited, thankfully in a room in A&E and not on a corridor, from 6.30 am Saturday until Monday afternoon, when the bed was wheeled up to the assessment ward.

….. waited anxiously by the nurse’s station, hearing the ward manager tell the nurse who had accompanied us that there had been a mistake in communication and that there wasn’t a bed !

That last wait was just a few minutes. Whew! There followed the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday and half of Wednesday before we were discharged, medically sorted but weak and unable to stand or walk unaided.

We read lots of statistics about the NHS and ambulance service. They’re all about waiting times and related statistics. What I can’t find is a simple figure – The actual number of emergency ambulances for a given area. Because everything depends on how many ambulances and how many staff there are.

This was one of the complaints from the first paramedic. There just aren’t enough ambulances. Sadly, we are seeing the collapse of the infrastructure of our beloved country in so many ways. The Health Service; Royal Mail; our schools; high streets …

As I was writing the title of this post – ‘all our systems are broken’ – it was then that the word ‘cisterns’ came to mind as well.

A cistern is a container for water, that most valuable of resources. A broken cistern leaks. It’s not fit for purpose. Sadly, many of our cisterns are leaking and fast approaching the point where there’s no water left.

However … the saving grace has been the people. Almost without exception, the nurses, doctors and other staff we have encountered have been patient, kind and good humoured. It’s the systems that we need fixing.