Woman in pain has 10-hour wait for ambulance
A DISABLED pensioner who badly broke her hip and leg waited nearly 10 hours for an ambulance to arrive – and then a further four hours on a trolley in A&E, her family claims.
Brenda Dwek, 88, fell at her home in Cowbridge on Mother’s Day morning and was unable to get up due to the excruciating pain she was suffering on her right side.
Luckily her son-in-law Dai Harris arrived at her home just 20 minutes after the fall took place and dialled 999 when he failed to sit her up safely.
But the elderly woman, who has been registered disabled ever since she had an operation to remove a brain tumour 35 years ago, was forced to remain on the floor of her hallway well into the evening.
When Brenda started to deteriorate at around 5pm, Dai said the 999 call was escalated and an ambulance crew arrived at around 8.20pm.
He said: “When they arrived they were absolutely brilliant. They injected her with morphine and then took her off to A&E,” he said.
“The whole thing was terribly distressing for her and my wife. Any human being – after six, seven, eight hours unable to move on the floor – will need to exercise their bodily functions. There was no dignity for her.”
After being blue lighted to the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend, Brenda was taken off the ambulance and put on a trolley bed in the corridor of A&E.
Dai claims she remained there until the early hours of Monday morning when she was eventually handed over to hospital staff for further treatment.
Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, has accused the First Minister of having “no answers to Wales’ crisis in emergency services”.
He said: “There has to be something seriously wrong with the system when an elderly, disabled patient is forced to wait nearly ten hours for an ambulance after a serious fall.
Greg Lloyd, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s operations manager for the Cardiff and Vale Health Board area, said: “We are extremely sorry to hear about Mrs Dwek’s wait and appreciate how distressing this must have been for her and her family, which is why we will be contacting them in order to address their queries in greater detail.
“Improving our response to patients who’ve fallen is one of the Trust’s main priorities, and while we know it’s of little con- solation to Mrs Dwek and her family, we continue to work hard with our stakeholders to achieve this.”
A Welsh Government Spokesperson said: “We’ve been open about the periods of pressures the NHS, in particular emergency departments, have faced across the UK during the winter. NHS Wales’ organisations have been planning extensively for the winter and have been supported by an additional £20m funding from us.
Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board, which runs Princess of Wales Hospital, said A&E was very busy on Sunday, with high num- bers of critically ill patients arriving needing emergency unplanned care.
A spokeswoman said: “During the day ambulance delays were kept to a minimum. But demand on services increased in the evening and this led to delays for ambulances and within the emergency department (ED).”