Apology after south Warwickshire 90-year-old left waiting on floor for ambulance for seven hours
A 90-YEAR-OLD south Warwickshire man with an amputated leg had to wait seven and a half hours for an ambulance after suffering a fall in his kitchen.
John Ruff, from Lower Quinton, spent the entire time on a cold kitchen floor while neighbours cared for him. At one point they removed his false leg because of the discomfort it was causing.
His fall occurred at 7.30pm on Thursday, 15th September. The ambulance crew arrived at 3am on the Friday morning (16th September).
Several calls were made to the West Midlands Ambulance control room throughout the evening. When the crew turned up they said they’d come from Warwick Hospital and had only been notified of Mr Ruff’s case 30 minutes before arrival.
Mr Ruff lives with his disabled wife Pauline at the Marston Edge Residential Park Homes site in the village. He does most of the cooking for the couple and was preparing some soup when the accident happened.
The site is run by former county and district councillor Mike Brain and his wife Jeanette. Mr Brain, an ex-chairman of Stratford District Council, is himself a former ambulance man and ex-police officer.
He told the Herald: “Fortunately, John wasn’t seriously injured – apart from suffering shock and lying on a cold kitchen floor for seven hours. His injuries were superficial in the end.
“I wouldn’t normally go to the press, but something like this is near to my heart, with elderly people suffering because of delayed ambulance responses.”
He added: “This isn’t just about John, but about the wider community. There’s something fundamentally wrong with the system. It’s either the system of management, the lack of personnel or lack of ambulances. It’s got to be one of them.”
Mr Brain said the ambulance crew told him that the actual cause of the problem was a shortage of staff – something the ambulance trust denies.
Eventually Mr Ruff was driven off in the ambulance at 4.13am after receiving attention from the paramedics. His daughters, Jane Phipps and Christine Kent, followed the ambulance in Jane’s car to Warwick Hospital while Jane’s husband looked after their mother.
Mrs Phipps said that fortunately the hospital was not very busy and her father was dealt with fairly quickly. After undergoing blood tests and X-rays he was discharged at about 9.30am.
“Nothing was broken, but he was very badly bruised and shocked,” said Mrs Phipps. “It’s a lot for a 90-year-old to go through. The administration needs to pull its finger out.
“Since it’s gone to a central call centre people don’t know the areas and the whole thing seems to have broken down. The ambulances no longer have a central hub and are all scattered.”
Asked if she was angry about the situation, Mrs Phipps told the Herald she was not angry, but upset. “I’m upset that we’ve got a system in place that’s broken – and broken because of politics,” she said.
When asked what she meant by that, Mrs Phipps said: “Every time with the NHS, when there’s a problem, they employ another manager to sort things out and then end up with layers of faceless people and nobody to take responsibility.
“It’s no good losing your temper. It comes down to politics – ‘saving money’ but at the same time employing people on 80 grand or more to ‘sort out’ these problems.”
Sue Holland and her husband Steve were neighbours who helped Mr Ruff after his fall. Mrs Holland told the Herald: “We’d been out all day at a funeral and had just got back. Pauline, John’s wife, phoned and asked if my husband Steve could come and pick John up. But there was no way we could have picked him up because he would have been in too much pain.”
Mrs Holland said she made a 999 call to the ambulance service and was told they might have to wait up to six hours for an ambulance. She said she was advised that Mr Ruff should not be moved.
“My husband sat on the floor with John and held his hand,” said Mrs Holland. “When we first got there his breathing was shallow and he was sick three times. He’d recently had an operation.”
Mrs Holland was told to keep her phone nearby, which she did. The ambulance service said they’d ring her back – and eventually they did, at 10.40pm. “I spoke to them first and went through everything again. Mike Brain phoned again at about 1am. We were told to keep John warm and make him more comfortable.
“I was just really concerned. We didn’t know if he was going to take a turn for the worse, having not been well. We were all very concerned for him.
“It isn’t their fault [the ambulance personnel]. They haven’t got enough staff or ambulances. We couldn’t take John to the hospital ourselves because we didn’t know if he’d broken anything. Fortunately it turned out he hadn’t.
“If we have to help anyone else, we hope they won’t be kept waiting for seven hours.”
A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokeswoman said: “We would like to apologise to Mr Ruff for the delayed response.
“The ambulance service relies on each part of the health and social care system working together so that our ambulances can get to patients in the community quickly.
“Sadly, the pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital rather than responding to the next call. The result is that our crews are delayed reaching patients.
“We are working incredibly hard with all of our NHS and social care partners to prevent these delays, looking at new ways to safely hand over patients quickly so that our crews can respond more rapidly and save more lives.”
