Volunteers are being asked to drive 999 patients to hospital, as part of efforts to relieve pressures on ambulance services. The Telegraph has more.
The London Ambulance Service (LAS) is to start piloting the system within weeks, as senior doctors warn of “staggeringly bad” delays to emergency care in some parts of the country.
Although volunteers are regularly used by hospitals and charities to take patients to outpatient appointments, this is thought to be the first time that non-professionals will be used to ferry emergency cases.
The ambulance service already sends taxis to take some patients to hospital. The new scheme is aimed at patients who are classed as “category 3” – meaning they should get an urgent response within two hours – and who need help because of mobility problems.
LAS officials said that NHS England is looking to use it as the basis for a “national volunteer transport” system.
Across the country, ambulance response times are the lowest on record, with average waits of more than an hour for heart attack and stroke victims in March, against a target of 18 minutes.
In the capital, average waits for such emergencies were almost 51 minutes, data show.
So far, 22 volunteers have been signed up and trained for the scheme, which is currently using “community first responders” trained by St. John’s Ambulance.
Responders, who have training in emergency first aid, are normally deployed to get to emergency calls quickly and provide on-the-spot help before ambulance crews can get there.
The service told a board meeting last month: “The project is supported by NHS England and NHS Improvement who are looking to implement a national volunteer transport model based on using our model.”
NHS England is understood to have provided £100,000 funding for the pilots, set to be launched in May, using LAS cars based at each of the six ambulance stations across the capital.
The new scheme comes amid warnings of “appalling” waits for ambulances in some parts of the country.
Worth reading in full.
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…to drive imaginary ambulances?
How about some “volunteer doctors” who actually turn up for work and see patients face to face?
Hang on, I thought we’d saved our National Hiding Service?
No matter, perhaps the next scarient
Despite this crisis, ambulance drivers regularly switch on sirens at 80 decibels plus, when there is no traffic within 200 yards of their vehicle. They are doing it to target pedestrians with noise abuse.
Until ambulance drivers, policemen etc stop abusing their positions to commit noise crimes, I have zero sympathy for any of them.
There really is so much in this ridiculous idea to chew on, it could take days, weeks, months to dissect. The idea of my 80 year old husband who can barely deal with a small cut on his hand, chauffeuring a heart attack victim to the hospital is hilarious. What will the GREAT NHS come up with next? I know…..instead of getting your neighbour to drive you to the hospital in an emergency, ask your neighbour to deal with the problem. There, that solves so many problems on so many levels!
The NHS increasingly staffed by volunteers. As if we don’t give this odious organisation enough money, people have to work for it for nothing.
I wonder why right?
NHS needs loads of cheap labour for driving ambulances? How about contacting the people who own P&O ferries – they seem to know how to get hold of ‘replacements’.
Volunteers needed? How about ‘volunteers’ doing the ‘jobs’ of Johnson, Sunak, Patel, Hancock, Gove, Khan, Javid…. all for free! All that money that would be freed up could be used for… well… ambulance drivers?!
I’ll give everyone a little clue as to the cause of all this.
I began my working life as a cop but left after many years when it became apparent we were heading in the direction of woke policing, that was in the mid 80’s. There were other personal reasons not worth going into.
I went into business and semi retired in my late 50’s, but was at a loose end so joined the Ambulance service as a patient transport crew member.
It’s a tough job. It’s not simply driving old biddies to and from hospital. Crews are invariably carrying at least one patient up and down narrow, domestic stairs once a day at least. They transport some very sick people, many of them not for long in this world, some with some scary infectious conditions. Full PPE? You must be joking.
In my case, this ‘caring’ profession was run by G4S. Yep, a business principally founded to transport cash around the country runs probably the biggest patient transport operation in the country.
To say it was run by neanderthals would be a dreadful insult to that noble race. I’m all for using privatised services to improve the NHS, but… Read more »
Vaxxed volunteers only?
What happened to Captain Tom’s £30m?
Also, doesn’t an ambulance driver need a particular class of licence? Or are they redefining what counts as an ambulance?
Correct, unless you are of a certain age, or the ambulance falls into the same class as a transit van.
Which solves nothing anyway. The standard of driving in the UK is zero. Emergency drivers are trained beyond the level of a rudimentary driving test which makes them, amongst the top 10% of drivers in the country in my opinion. These drivers will be unlikely to ever have any ‘advanced’ (I despise that elitist term) training.
I’m a police trained pursuit driver, a former RoSPA member and a former DSA driving instructor. I can promise everyone who hasn’t taken secondary driver training after passing their test that, no matter how good you think you are, you are a lousy driver.
I have attended far too many serious/fatal road accidents, and witnesses ‘hero’ motorcyclists with their skin peeled off uttering, ‘but I’m a good driver/rider, I don’t know what happened’.
If you’re in a crash and ‘don’t know what happened’ or ‘it was the other blokes fault guv’ then you are the problem.
When someone has a drunken idiot crash into the side of them who has just jumped a red light at a busy junction they don’t necessarily deserve any blame.
That said, I agree with everything else. I’ve encountered guys in their 50s who boast about how seldom they look in their rearview mirrors and how they like to hold the steering wheel with one finger at the bottom.
I assume from your comments you have a qualified opinion on the matter. I have travelled the UK on driver training, perhaps we have met?
A driver with secondary training (also known as advanced training) is highly unlikely to be hit by a drunk driver. Every driver is drunk in our assessment of any given situation.
Volunteers?
In other words, ordinary people, many of whom are now working every hour they possibly can to make ends meet, because of the escalating cost of living crisis, about which Saint Boris and his band of merry (wealthy) men are doing nothing, and probably brought about deliberately as another means to oppress the plebs? Now that immunity to the campaign of fear is setting in, the dictatorship is taxing the plebs into submission?
Volunteering for the NHS was one thing when healthy people were paid to sit at home, and had oodles of time on their hands. Now, it’s an insult, asking us to do so when many people sacrificed their livelihoods, their mental health, their children’s education on the altar of “protect the NHS”.
Are the volunteers paid expenses, or do they have to pay for their own (astronomically expensive) fuel? Indeed, is there any fuel to be had?
So for free People are going to transport a 999 (emergency ) patient to hospital. What if the patient suffers a life or death incident being transported? It all sounds like a dream for no win no fee lawyers
Unlikely. You need to understand the difference between Patient Transport Ambulances and Emergency Ambulances.
I can see the next piece of MSM propaganda coming into focus….it’s…..
‘Twisted anti-vaxxers are prank calling 999 causing huge ambulance delays’.
“There are no words harsh enough for these people” According to Sharon Wantbottom, an NHS call centre responder who has missed key time with her family to put in extra hours during the pandemic. “We’ve all made sacrifices over the last two years, it’s been tough for everyone. These idiot anti-vaxxers are calling 999 pretending to be injured after taking the injection. It’s one thing to spread dangerous information on the internet but this is affecting people in the real world who are having to wait longer for an ambulance they desperately need.”
Segway into the online safety bill and kill two birds with one stone….
I’d be happier if they’d announce a National Volunteer Manager scheme, and left the ambulance driving to paid professionals.
There might even be a net benefit, as people with experience from the real-world could go in and solve some of their atrocious management issues.
Volunteer anythings are a liability. They have no reason to get things right as they don’t risk their livelihood or reputation if they screw up.
Volunteering is an exercise in virtue promotion. If one has to volunteer then one is clearly not worth employing.
Rather points up what plenty are saying – despite thousands of pointless managers, the NHS is a dysfunctional, rapidly failing, disaster soaking up tax payers money for a poor return.
The NHS is one of the largest employers in the world — I’m surprised they’ve not got some useless managers that could drive the ambulances.
I am sure they do have
Surely their diversity coordinators ought to be first in line?
Rather too much danger of having to actually meet the people that they’ve agitating on behalf of.
Get their hands dirty. Heaven forbid, they have university degrees.
Too many females in the health service, especially GPs, who don’t work more than part time. That’s one of the reasons for the staff shortages you won’t ever hear mentioned. Part of the cost of utopia, and a total lack of common sense. Human life in this case.
It has long been observed the more female doctors you train the more doctors you need overall. If you can earn £80,000 pa working part time why work full time?
Quality, not quantity mate. Two experiences of mine.
I accepted as a young man that dental treatment came with excruciating pain despite local anaesthesia. The first female dentist I visited identified I had ‘crossed nerves’ in my mouth. For the first time in 30 years I wasn’t ripping the arms off the chair when having a filling.
The second experience was when I was being prepped for a replacement hip a couple of years ago. I contracted a disgusting skin condition on the soles of my feet. My hip was secondary to the pain it induced. I went for an assessment for my hip, hobbled in and, to cut a long story short, the female nursing staff went berserk at the state of my feet, whilst a male orthopaedic surgeon dismissed it as trivial.
I couldn’t have given a flying monkeys about my hip at that point.
I wound up in my GP’s surgery twice. The male GP I saw said I should go to hospital to have it checked, Duh! The second GP, a female, identified it as Eczema and gave me a tube of cream. Job done.
Time to stop deifying the NHS and start breaking it up, it is an abhorrent waste of money.
Just open it up to competition. No need to break up anything or privatise. Let the market sort it out.
Giving taxpayers (not that I don’t say patients) the option to take our money to private providers will solve it pretty sharpish.
Scotch Freedom Day muzzle report: even 50/50 split between rational folk vs Branch Covidian faithful.
Notable mentions to the True Follower of The Science either still muzzled devoutly in the middle of nowhere, or with them tucked under their chins as a talisman in busy shops. Possibly to catch their tears of disappointment that even Kween Krankie has become a heretic now.
Was in a cafe today in Glasgow. About 75% of those entering put their mask on outside the door to get to their seat. Last week it was probably 98%.
A generous interpretation would be they have been traumatized by the propaganda.
I predict it will drop off to low numbers until Wee Jimmy announces the next variant at which point I will predict close to 90% adoption. So much for the fierce Scots.
And we’ll roll out all the pictures of her “forgetting” over and over that the deadliest pandemic ever is raging, and the Branch Covidians will just shake their heads and tut at our foolish belief that the coofs can harm the faithful.
I met up with a mate of mine after more than 30 years for coffee in a hotel close to Buchanan Galleries car park. Glasgow is as much a mystery to me now as London was when I moved down here 34 years ago.
I was surprised that no one in the hotel bothered with a mask other than front of house staff. The trendy cafe bar was upstairs (there was a soft toy giraffe as an ornament as I recall) and I don’t think the waitresses were muzzled.
In years gone by we would have met in a pub, but it was refreshingly civilised not to be pissed out wur heids after a truly excellent night.
Visited Edinburgh last week and was challenged once to put on a mask and it was to enter a whisky shop. I explained that in Middle England we no longer wore masks and if his worked why did I have to wear one, but he said ‘Nicola says’. I am sorry to admit my desire to purchase alcohol overcame my mask wearing belligerence.
And if you are driving an emergency case, and the victim dies en route, or suffers damage from oxygen starvation, or something, you get sued, yes?
People die. Get used to it.
(no sarcasm intended).
You watch your weakest just rot on the streets and now you are considered among the weakest, I wonder how that will go.
Is it my fault the weakest on the street just rot? Or theirs?
Save a few bob who cares!
You can’t just turn up and offer to help. There are many protocols that you have to follow in terms of picking people up off the street. Really if you think this approach is viable then consider it in terms of yourself. Some random ambulance crew just picking you up off the street.I have wondered before what the English will do in order to save money. Thay have reached their laughable destination now.
Oh really?
What would they be?
You’re missing the point. The treatment isn’t avaliable even if they turn up at the hospital pronto. We are talking about levels of injury that we have no remedy for. Complete destruction of organ tissue. It is hard to tell anyone anything but just consider how many insects you came across ten years ago to how many you come across now. Just open your eyes.
WhaTF?!!!!!
Insectageddon – the result of EU agricultural policy on the ecosystem. I never understood why the Green Party were so pro-EU.
Volunteers???
Why?
The NHS has many thousands of managerial staff who do f*** all………most of whom are probably still ‘working’ from home.
Time for them to organise a roster of these lazy parasitic b*****s to get some real work done.
What’s the point of this? Unless you can get the ‘patient’ into the hospital, where they can be assessed and treated… at the moment ambulances aren’t available precisely because they cannot discharge their patients into A+E and get back ‘online’; the last time I went past my local hospital, there were fifteen ambulances lined up outside. This will jus add more sitting in a car to those numbers.
The problem is what’s happening inside the hospital, not outside… and it’s not that there isn’t enough diversity!
The problem is, what’s classed as an emergency patient.
You’re spot on, pjar. 9 years ago my husband died because there were no ambulances available, most of them were queued up outside hospitals waiting to transfer patients. At the Inquest all sorts of promises were made that lessons had been learnt and things would improve……..
More Ambulance drivers will not solve the problem. They’ll just end up queueing with the rest for hours. Although, belatedly some attempt is being made to increase bed capacity it’s a bit late in the day. Three reasons I can think of why we have reached this perilous situation, firstly, backlog due to lockdowns, secondly, adverse reactions to the jabs including poor immunity and thirdly isolating patients who were admitted for other reasons because of a positive PCR test.
I await the screeching of “Privatisation by the back door!” and calls to down-tools by Unite.
They may actually have a point. You could employ two or three drivers for every Diversity Director. It’s not like Our Holy Church of NHS is short of money. So why “volunteers”?
And given that the Church is always two weeks from collapse, when will the need for them end?
Perhaps if they had not mandated Covid vaxxes they would not have lost so many ambulance crews!!