Short-staffed ambulance service leads to increased waiting times
- 10.05.2016
- HannahBottomley
- Clinical-negligence, Opinion, Clinical-negligence, Opinion
Worrying reading on the BBC today in relation to their article commenting on the East Midlands Ambulance Service considered to have insufficient staffing levels by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
The CQC is the organisation responsible for monitoring all medical bodies in the UK and ensuring that they are able to meet the needs of the public groups they serve.
The CQC therefore undertake assessments of organisations as diverse as privately run nursing homes to ambulance trusts and where they find a cause for concern, as in this case, they can publish their findings and make recommendations for improvements.
It is perhaps no surprise that the CQC found the insufficient staffing levels having a direct impact on ambulance response times. This is incredibly worrying as often with serious medical conditions and accidents the timing of the intervention is crucial.
I have worked with many families in many different situations who have found to their detriment that a delayed ambulance can have a serious and significant impact on the outcome of an injured person.
PotterReesDolan has also recently settled a case for a young boy who suffered a significant brain injury as a result in a delay in receiving appropriate care and treatment from paramedics. The key issues in that case were the paramedics failure to appropriately administer oxygen however there was also a delay in them reaching our client making the situation even worse.
Delays in treating significant injuries are known to have devastating effects and we obtain expert advice time and again which shows that with prompt intervention a significant brain injury or spinal injury could have been avoided.
I hope that the East Midlands Ambulance Service resolve their staffing problem quickly and that ambulance response times improve as this could be the difference between an injured person making a near full recovery and being left with a devastating and permanent injury.