An elderly woman with suspected sepsis spent nearly 10 hours in the back of an ambulance waiting to be taken into an overcrowded A&E department, her daughter claims. Natalie Davies said she feared her mother Gillian Davies, 84, would die as a result of the "unacceptable" delays.
Gillian, a grandmother-of-two from Llanederyn, Cardiff, was suffering with a very high temperature, shaking and confusion on Sunday, August 28, so the decision was made to call an ambulance. Despite paramedics arriving at her home within 15 minutes to drive her to the University Hospital of Wales (UHW), A&E staff were allegedly unable to take the patient as there were no beds available.
It resulted in the pensioner spending nine-and-a-half hours in the back of three different ambulances outside the hospital, becoming dehydrated and increasingly upset, her daughter claims. "My father died at the same hospital in a similar situation, and I thought 'this is how it's going to end for my mum as well'," admitted Natalie.
