…an 83-year-old woman and a balance beam in a children’s playground!!
Yesterday however the two came into very close contact and you can imagine the outcome! My wonderfully lively and active mother-in-law was enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon in the park with her 2 1/2-year-old great-grandson. She decided to demonstrate to him how to walk on the balance beam which stood about 18 inches off of the ground. (In the meantime said great-grandson toddled off to the slide and was not was even watching.) So, here is my mother-in-law up on the beam…oh did I mention she was still wearing her high heels?? Next thing she knows she is flying towards the spongy mat. Although the spongy mat broke her fall it also acted like a catapult and shot her sideways into one of those big spider web things with the nylon ropes and metal poles. She hit one of the metal cross bars impacting at her ribs. This was approximately 3:00 p.m. It took the ambulance one hour to get to her and then a trip to the A&E. Being a former emergency services person this is where I lose patience very quickly when I see that simple things just are not being done. I won’t name the specific hospital but let’s say if this hospital was a person then this man’s name would have been Lester!
Pam and I get the call at about 5:00 asking if we could come to the hospital after making a stop at mum’s to pick up an over night bag etc. We arrive at the A&E at around 6:15 to find that mum had just been assessed and was waiting to see a doctor. She was having trouble breathing and they gave her some pain killers while she waited and waited and waited. The A&E was like crammed full with people waiting everywhere. For the first 4 hours or so no one seemed to move out of A&E. They just kept piling up. Finally shift change came and a nurse ,who I wish I got her name came, in and saw the chaos. It did not take her very long to start sorting the place out. She got the staff moving and before we knew it we actually saw patients going to X-Ray, being moved on to the ward, getting discharged. It was an amazing transformation. Although grateful that this woman was making such an immediate impact it just underlined that fact that the chaos could have been avoided in the first place if someone had taken charge as she did! It still took a few hours to unravel this huge backlog and as a result we left the hospital at around 1:00 a.m. So just a few words to the NHS…overall I think you are very good however there is room to improve and having an organised A&E makes a massive difference. The ambulance crews were backed up 4 deep not being able to off load or handover their patients this in turn caused a shortage of emergency ambulances on the road. Patients need to be triage and assessed faster and X-Ray needs to support great capacity. I realise these are easy things to say but they are doable and would make the NHS a more efficient operation. So, thank you to the unknown nurse who took command and kicked butt. We need more of these people. My mother-in-law is resting at home with her cat.