Pensioner waited 10 hours for ambulance after breaking leg

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.

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 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.

Dai said: “I discovered her behind her front door at about 10.45am on Sunday morning when I went to collect her. When I got access to the house I made initial attempts to lift her into a sitting position, but she was writhing in pain and I had no alternative to call the ambulance at about 10.55am.

“My wife [Brenda’s daughter] and I then basically sat and waited for an ambulance to arrive. We chased and chased them. It didn’t help that every time I called them, which must have been around seven times, that I had to repeat the location, her date of birth and what was wrong with her. It was a complete waste of time.”

When Brenda started to deteriorate at about 5pm, Dai said the 999 call was escalated and an ambulance crew arrived at 8.20pm.

“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.”

He added the paramedics who turned up had no idea Brenda had been on the floor for so long.

“They were absolutely devastated and so apologetic, but it’s not their fault. They were incredibly professional.”

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 stayed there until the early hours of Monday when she was eventually handed over to hospital staff for further treatment.

“The paramedics took her into casualty, took her down to have the necessary X-rays and then joined the trolley queue,” he said.

“She wasn’t formally signed over to hospital staff until about 1.15am. It meant her particular ambulance was sitting outside the hospital doing nothing for nearly four hours.

“And there’s no privacy in A&E. The nurses had to ask all these questions about her background and medical history where everyone could hear.”

Dai said Brenda needed an emergency hip replacement and is likely to remain in the Princess of Wales for several weeks.

Andrew RT Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives, has accused the First Minister of having “no answers to Wales’ crisis in emergency services”.

Speaking in the Senedd, he also claimed the Princess of Wales Hospital’s bereavement room was being used as a make-shift trolley area.

Greg Lloyd, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s operations manager for the Cardiff and Vale Health Board area, said: “Improving our response to patients who’ve fallen is one of the Trust’s main priorities, and while we know it’s of little consolation to Mrs Dwek and her family, we continue to work hard with our stakeholders to achieve this.

“In the meantime our thoughts and best wishes are with Mrs Dwek for her ongoing recovery.”

Speaking the Senedd, First Minister Carwyn Jones said: “We know that ambulance response times have improved greatly now for more than a year. But there are examples which will need to be investigated and see why such an incident has arisen.”

A spokeswoman for ABMU said the Princess of Wales Hospital was “very busy” on Sunday – with high numbers of critically ill patients needing emergency care.

She said: “Staff have been working around the clock to minimise delays. We’ve also been working closely with local authority colleagues to put community care packages in place as quickly as possible for those patients who no longer need hospital care and are ready for discharge.”