A pensioner was forced to lie on a hospital trolley after a stroke for 21 hours because there were no beds.
Frank Mooney, 65, had been sent to St John’s Hospital, Livingston by his GP who detected warning signs in a chance phone call. The GP was so concerned about his condition he told him not to wait for an ambulance but to get his wife to drive him straight away to hospital.
However, while Frank was taken immediately for tests because his doctor had alerted the hospital, he then spent almost a day on the trolley - many hours of which were actually in a busy hospital corridor alongside other patients similarly lined up.
Labour’s health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said: “This shocking case lays bare the crisis at the heart of the NHS.
“That this man was left on a trolley for nearly 24 hours is simply horrific.
“Staff are working round the clock but are being failed by the SNP Government.
“While Humza Yousaf hides from scrutiny, Scots are losing their lives from preventable causes.
“We cannot normalise the humanitarian crisis in our NHS. It’s time this do-nothing health minister got his jotters.”
Frank said he had a sore head all day on October 21 which he thought was a migraine and went to lie down but just a minute and a half later his GP rang.
He said: “I was undergoing tests for cancer at the time and my GP was really good at keeping in touch. It was about 5pm and he really should have been away home but he gave me a ring.
“I tried to answer him but I had lost the power of speech.
“The doctor asked my wife if I had been drinking but she told him I hadn’t. The doctor said he thought I was having a stroke.
“He told my wife to take me straight to St John’s and not wait on an ambulance. She had to stop the car on the way for me to be violently sick and stopped another twice because I felt sick.
“It was really difficult even trying to communicate I needed her to stop without speech,
“I was triaged straight away and sent for tests.
“It turns out I’d had a TIA, a mini stroke. One of my arteries from my neck to the brain had clotted but the doctors said it had freed itself.
“After I knew what was going on I began to feel a bit better but part of my brain wasn’t getting any blood.
“I thought I was going to be in hospital for a while but they told me there wasn’t a single bed in the hospital.
“I was on a trolley for 21 hours, in a corridor for quite a while and then I got moved into a cubicle.
“I tried to get some sleep but it wasn’t easy on a trolley and when I awoke in the morning the corridor was full of trollies with people on them.
“The young doctor came in and spent quite a bit of time with me but I told her I would rather go home if I was ill than lie on a trolley.”
Frank added: “The staff were run off their feet. I have no argument with them whatsoever. It wasn’t their fault there were no beds.
“Staff were saying it was worse than during the Covid lockdown. It is certainly the worst I have ever seen.”
Frank, a retired bricklayer and social care worker, said that while he had read in the Daily Record of the queues at hospitals it was only when he had personal experience of it that he really understood the chaos.
He learned at hospital that the tests he had undergone earlier for cancer were all negative. Up to that point he had been waiting for three months for the results of a bowel cancer test.
And he stated: “In my humble opinion it was the stress of waiting so long for my test results which caused the stroke. I believed I had bowel cancer and the worry of it was awful, not knowing the results caused me real anxiety.”
Health Secretary Humza Yousaf admitted: “Excessively long waits are never acceptable and I am sorry Mr Mooney’s experience fell short of what everyone should expect.
“A&E departments continue to experience significant pressure and, in common with healthcare systems in the UK and globally, the pandemic is still impacting services.”
But he said: “We are supporting services through our £600 million winter plan which will see us recruit 1,000 new NHS staff, including up to 750 frontline nurses from overseas. Our £50 million Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative looks to drive down A&E waits.”
Jacquie Campbell, Chief Officer, Acute Services, NHS Lothian said: “We apologise to our patients who have experienced long waiting times.
“Our services are experiencing unprecedented and prolonged levels of demand which is causing real challenges for both acute and community care. This particular weekend was extremely busy.
“Our teams are working tirelessly to ensure that we can continue to prioritise the most clinically urgent patients by managing our resources and staff to improve flexibility and support patient flow.”
And she urged patients to call NHS 24 before travelling to A & E if their condition is not life threatening so the most clinically urgent patients can be prioritised.
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