‘Lack of support’ over concerns

A retired psychiatric nurse has criticised the lack of support available after finding a man passed out near to his home.

Bob Radcliffe (76) found the person by a tree near to his home in Parkside Crescent, Spalding.
A neighbour told Bob the person, who’d had a drink and was in a cast from a broken leg, had been sat under a tree in the rain for around 30 minutes.
However neither Lincolnshire Police nor East Midlands Ambulance Service said they could help.
Bob eventually managed to find out that the man was from a care home whose staff he found searching nearby.
“The man is fine thankfully,” Bob told The Voice. “I was disgusted though about the lack of support.
“I thought it was a body at first.
“Lincolnshire Police told me they couldn’t do anything and said I should phone the ambulance service.
“The ambulance service also didn’t want to know.
“When I told them which care home he was from they said it wasn’t their job to contact them so I’d have had to go home and look for a number.
“Thankfully I saw staff members looking for him.
“As a former psychiatric nurse I knew how to deal with the incident, but if I hadn’t, like most of my neighbours, they would have had no support from the emergency services at all.
“The man was drunk, but that’s not the point.
“It was raining at the time and it could have been much worse being incoherent out there like that.
“We are supposed to be a caring society, but the emergency services didn’t want to know.”
Gary Lockley, head of service delivery at the Emergency Operations Centre at East Midlands Ambulance Service said: “The NHS and ambulance service continues to operate under tremendous pressure.
“Every 999 call is assessed based on information provided by the caller so that people experiencing a life-threatening emergency such as a cardiac arrest or breathing difficulties can receive medical help as a priority.
“We have asked to speak to those concerned so we can fully investigate their experience with us and respond to them in full.”
A spokesman for Lincolnshire Police said that the incident was not within its remit because the incident involved ‘intoxication and medication’.
“Police are not the appropriate agency for responding to incidents of a medical concern as they are not medically trained or equipped,” a spokesman said.