The ambulance service in Wales declared a critical incident on December 19. This is a sign that the service is under immense levels of pressure that services will likely be delayed longer than usual. This happens very rarely with previous examples being in December 2020 during the height of the second Covid wave.
At one point there were over 90 ambulances waiting outside of hospitals. Ambulances being used as an auxiliary part of accident and emergency has been an emerging issue in recent years with emergency departments finding it increasingly hard to admit people into other parts of the hospital. Part of this issue is down to a shortage of social care meaning many people able to be discharged have to remain in hospital.
Read more: Former staff say they were left in tears working for Welsh Tory MS Janet Finch Saunders'
Assistant director of operations at the Welsh Ambulance Service Stephen Clinton said: “It is very rare that we declare a critical incident, but with significant demand on our service, and over 90 ambulances waiting to handover patients outside of hospitals yesterday, our ability to help patients was impacted.
“Regrettably, and unfortunately, this means that some patients will wait longer for an ambulance to arrive and for their calls to be answered. For that, we are very sorry, this is not the level of service that we want to offer."
Some health boards are performing better than others when it comes to reducing ambulance wait times outside hospitals. Cardiff and Vale for example has managed to reduce the need for long waits by making changes to admittance policy within the wider hospital. Despite this the overall waits around Wales continues to climb. This has several knock on effects including skill decay in paramedics as they spend most of their time waiting. There have been examples of paramedics finishing their shifts and then when they return 12 hours later they are joining the same patient in the same ambulance outside A&E.
Mr Clinton added: "We understand that this is very stressful for our patients, but we can assure them that we are doing everything we can to relieve the pressure on our service. The public can help by only calling 999 in the event of a life-threatening emergency - that’s a cardiac arrest, chest pain or breathing difficulties, loss of consciousness, choking, or catastrophic bleeding.
“If the situation is not a life-threatening emergency, then it’s important that you use one of the many alternatives to 999, starting with the symptom checkers on our NHS 111 Wales website as well as your GP, pharmacist, and minor injuries unit. We must protect our precious resources for those who need them the most. Our staff and volunteers are doing a brilliant job under very challenging circumstances, and we cannot thank them enough for their dedication and hard work during these very challenging times across the health service.”
Read more:
