Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Found on youtube

Rural services our way are just about zero. The local TV 2 days ago said they were removing 2/3rds of Avon and Somerset rural crime investigation police officers ( all 6 of them..) to other dutys until at least November due to a lack of officers for other areas. Four weeks ago our neighbours called the police to report a possible entry to a property in our Hamlet, the police call centre said they were too busy and transferred them to another Somerset call centre, with same issue, who then transferred them to a Midlands call centre!!. They responded with what can we do, suggest you send Avon and Somerset an email and they then gave our neighbour the email address.. No one responded in the end..
Same neighbour a week later fell over just around 2200 hrs, landed badly on a stone floor. They called me as I had trauma training, looked like a broken pelvis, so called 999 and made patient as comfortable as possible. The response was maybe a 7 hr wait as no ambulances available in our area. 2 hrs later called 999 again, still no ambulances and informed actually none free in the West country as they were all at hospitals trying to discharge their patients to the hospitals.. So 5 hrs after initial call the ambulance rocks up.. not happy....
Rant over...

That is shocking Dave, I hope your neighbour is recovering well.

In Essex there is a very successful Stolen vehicle unit and a dedicated Gypsy/Romany/Traveller unit that is also very active.

He is back home now and very slowly recovering... The old training comes in handy sometimes... I guess much reduced Police/NHS is something to consider now when living out in the sticks.. The lack of police coverage is on a lot of farmers and country folk minds.. 10 years ago it was not too bad, but over the last 5 years its become somewhat desperate.. I meet up with a fair amount of farmers in my travels and lack of responce is a frequent comment.

The poor old NHS gets a lot of stick, but its not the staff as the major issue it seems to be the systems and available resources.. We live some 17 miles from the nearest major hospital with full A+E, it was upgraded way back at the start of the 80's when the hospital moved from centre of town to an out of town site, but the new A+E size was built to the same size as the old one, which dated from the early 60's.. The town and area population has almost doubled over the last 10 years, but A+E is still the same. I have had to attend A+E several times in the two years, both for myself and for my son.. Its not a pretty picture, the waiting room seems constantly crammed, last time in my son was in major pain, it took 5 hrs to be seen and during that time I had to find a nurse/doc to adminster morphine while he lay stretched out over 4 chairs in a hallway waiting.. It took a further 20 hrs to get him in a ward bed. He is ok now and back to normal..but it was not a great experience.. We have a private Nuffield hospital in town, but as most, it does not have A+E, its good for scheduled surgery etc, if you can afford it, but no good at all for an emergency.

Sorry, ranting again.. must go and service our old quad. and get my mind refreshed....

So good to hear your neighbour is recovering well.

Sorry to read about your Son's experience though and glad he has recovered.

The NHS medical staff are beyond reproach as they are all angels in disguise and I am full of admiration for them and feel their frustration with not being able to deliver the service they would like to.

You are in need of a topless Mog run I think Dave
Thanks for sharing your experiences.

The explaination I heard regarding there being no ambulances was that they're all sat with their patients outside A&E for hours because that doesn't start the clock for the time taken to process someone through A&E .... once they cross the threshold they start to count towards the Hospital's target of performance ... so basically some manager somewhere is happy for your granny to lay on the floor for 8 hours (or maybe die) to massage their performance figures.

K

Ps ... A&E departments can only do so much, but the current system leaves casualties lying about un-assessed and in pain ... at least if they were in the system they could be triaged and the drunks and cut-fingers held back.

The other issue is that if someone is brought in by the Police they're jumped up the queue in order to get the officers back out there (especially Saturday nights )... so the drunks, overdoses and scrappers (all in some way self-inflicted) will constantly bump your granny down the list.

I see nothing has changed from 2 years ago. When visiting Cornwall my wife fell while walking on a country road and broke her hip, she was lying in the road in a good deal of pain and couldn't move. Passing cars stopped to help and protect her in the road, I called 999 and was told it could be up to 6 hours before an ambulance could get to us as it was not life threatening, I said if she gets hit by a car that would be life threatening, no change. With the help of 4 other people and a lady Angel who said she would drive us to the hospital we managed to get my wife into the car, she was in so much pain. On arrival at the hospital I counted 16 ambulances waiting with the crews to offload patients, one crew helped get my wife out of the car and into a wheelchair then told me to take her into the hospital otherwise they would be responsible. It took another hour before she was seen and no one would give her any pain relief, as soon as the trauma nurse saw her she was whisked off, took another 5 hours before she was admitted to a ward. Once our insurance company in the US got in contact with the hospital (took them 6 hours because no one at the hospital would deal with them) things suddenly changed and the hospital communicated with me and my wife. A lady in the bed next to my wife with a badly broken leg had been waiting in the ambulance in the car park for over 18 hours before being admitted. The other week here in our town (which is in the mountains and not near the hospital) a roofer fell off a roof and broke his back the paramedics were there in 3 minutes and the air ambulance arrived 15 minutes later to take him to the hospital, of course we pay for the service.

Really? My godfather had a caravan stolen from his yard in Takeley near Bishops Stortford, despite CCTV footage of the crims cutting the locks off and towing the caravan away, they refused to come out or carry out any form of meaning investigation.

Arwyn