The solution to ambulance queuing is surely very simple.
We were in Spain over Christmas and New Year and had to attend hospital in Alicante.
There you enter reception, your details are taken and you’re then into the triage area.
While waiting there, we saw numerous ambulances at A&E, patients brought in by wheelchair or trolley to the triage area, paperwork handed over to triage and the ambulances left almost immediately – this happened every time during the two hours or so we were there.
Ambulance staff should not be nursing patients in corridors.
In Spain, the patients were left waiting to be triaged in triage reception, while more serious patients were taken through for urgent treatment.
What is our NHS missing here? Is it too simple? No doubt it requires numerous meetings and manager appointments!
In January, I attended Peterborough Hospital for an x-ray and it was ambulance paramedics taking patients for an x-ray, not nursing staff!
I spoke to one paramedic, who stated over half her day was spent working as a hospital nurse!
Successive governments have let this situation occur, far too many managers, not enough feet on the ground actually treating patients.
John Bull
via email
