Prioritise patients

A HALLMARK of a civilised society is that if people fall seriously ill, an ambulance arrives promptly and they are treated by medical experts.

So something has gone woefully wrong when, as yesterday’s Mail reported, a son spends four hours crossing the country to reach his badly injured mother and still gets there before 999 crews.

But this is just the tip of the NHS crisis. Today we reveal junior staff with as little as eight weeks’ training are routinely dispatched to life-threatening emergencies without qualified paramedics.

Often unaccompanied, inexperienced care assistants are trusted to tend to patients, including stroke and heart attack victims.

Yes, the Mail admires enormously their dedication to saving lives. But the development is deeply troubling. We accept ambulance trusts are overstretched and have a chronic lack of paramedics. Of course, it’s better patients are treated quickly by a trained junior than no one at all. But isn’t this questionable practice a desperate attempt to meet controversial response targets?

Knowingly sending under-qualified people to treat the seriously ill is no answer. Doing so puts lives at risk.