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My dad could still be alive, but he's not

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Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#281

Post by roryirvine »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #149
rich_sasha wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cousin's 3yo daughter stopped breathing one night, woke up struggling for breath, turning blue. They called the ambulance. Dispatcher said, 3 hr wait, and pretty please get off the phone, as there's a queue of callers. She started breathing again after a few minutes and seems fine, but they left the UK not long after that.

The dispatcher must not have understood right? This is like evil levels of incompetence otherwise, because the system can’t possibly be designed to do that right? So the dispatcher must have been in the wrong, but to make the dispatcher not completely evil we have to make her merely stupid and/or careless. That’s terrifying. Where did they go to if you don’t mind me asking?

Yeah. Ambulance services have been hard-pressed in the UK in recent years, especially in the immediate aftermath of Covid - but this should very clearly have been a Category 1 call (unconscious, difficulty breathing, or heart attack symptoms).

Last month in England (each country in the UK has its own stats), the mean response time (from dialling 999 to the ambulance arriving) for Cat 1 was 8 mins 1 second, and the 90th %ile time was 14m18s. That's a bit above the target response time of 7 mins, but a 3 hour wait strongly suggests a miscategorisation.

"Is the patient breathing? Are they conscious?" are literally the first words on the dispatcher's script, so something seems to have gone terribly wrong here.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#282

Post by captainkrtek »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #223
captainkrtek wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an EMT, I’d say to ask your primary care provider :-) Don’t want to suggest you do something and end up with anaphylaxis.

And this right here is the problem. Possibly-imperfect knowledge is being self-censored for legal concerns, and what we are left with is silence. A bunch of people don’t even have a primary care provider now.

> Possibly-imperfect knowledge is being self-censored for legal concerns

It’s not out of legal concern. I do not know how one tests an allergy, I’m not an MD..

Im sure google could suggest some options or maybe a test.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#283

Post by tetris11 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #132
pugio wrote: post #48

I can speak to this. I recently joined a community first responder association (I've always wanted to know what to do in case of a medical emergency) and was shocked to hear the members' horror stories of how long it can take an ambulance to arrive. Like the author, I grew up with the narrative "in trouble, call the ambulance, they'll scream through the streets to get to you in moments". That might still be true wher…

My cousin's 3yo daughter stopped breathing one night, woke up struggling for breath, turning blue. They called the ambulance. Dispatcher said, 3 hr wait, and pretty please get off the phone, as there's a queue of callers. She started breathing again after a few minutes and seems fine, but they left the UK not long after that.

London, last year - 90 minute wait for an ambulance to the hospital 10 minutes away.

We called an Uber

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#284

Post by IAmBroom »

jll29 wrote: post #273
twodave wrote: post #83

I feel this, but in reverse. My son could be dead, but he’s not. He was born on the floor of a trailer park apartment, not breathing. His birth mother’s partner called 911, who dispatched an ambulance. All rescue units for his zone were already busy. An ambulance returning from the nearby hospital to another zone heard the call over the radio and happened to be passing by. The hospital was expecting a DOA, but the pa…

Ex-paramedic here. Happy to here your son is fine. But either you mistold the story, or the paramedics made a mistake: ambulances are not supposed to transport a dead person - the paramedics are first to resuscitate and stabilize the patient, and only then initiate transportation. (I understand you may not care, because the outcome of their action incidentally was one you like.)

You are assuming things twodave didn't say.

He didn't say the baby wasn't breathing when they picked him up. He said the hospital was expecting a DOA - presumably because of the news along the way, before they resuscitated the baby.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#285

Post by boxerab »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #82
boxerab wrote: post #79

[flagged]

Immigration is like the free square in Bingo. It can be the cause of any problem you want!

of course ! flooding Toronto with unskilled, uneducated immigrants couldn't possibly put emergency services under increased strain leading to poor quality of service.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#286

Post by boxerab »

nozzlegear wrote: post #100
boxerab wrote: post #79

[flagged]

If Canada just made those illegal immigrants legal, they could volunteer for EMS training, work on ambulance crews and staff hospitals. Open the borders and let the people work god damnit!

lol - given the politics here, I almost did not catch the sarcasm of your post

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#287

Post by boxerab »

Dettul wrote: post #203
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration is like the free square in Bingo. It can be the cause of any problem you want!

In fairness it is actually causing a lot of problems in the West...

I would say this is one of the mortal dangers currently facing the West - more particularly, importing people who hate the West and would like to see it become like their failed origin states.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#288

Post by mdavidn »

deburo wrote: post #279
twodave wrote: post #83

I feel this, but in reverse. My son could be dead, but he’s not. He was born on the floor of a trailer park apartment, not breathing. His birth mother’s partner called 911, who dispatched an ambulance. All rescue units for his zone were already busy. An ambulance returning from the nearby hospital to another zone heard the call over the radio and happened to be passing by. The hospital was expecting a DOA, but the pa…

This must have happened within seconds otherwise he must have been breathing almost imperceptibly, right? Otherwise how could his brain still survive?

Infants don't breathe before birth either. A beating heart would provide umbilical circulation for a few fleeting minutes.

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#289

Post by canucker2016 »

canucker2016 wrote: post #188
starkparker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-paramedic-sta... > Last year, Toronto paramedics reported that in 2023 there were 1,200 occasions where no ambulances were available to respond to an emergency call. That was up from only 29 occasions in 2019. > CUPE Local 416, the union representing 1,400 paramedics working in Toronto, has also reported high instances of burnout in recent years.

There were several reports during the pandemic about lack of ambulance service in Toronto: - 2022 - https://www.blogto.com/city/2022/01/toronto-ran-out-ambulanc... - 2023 - https://www.blogto.com/city/2023/10/paramedics-raise-alarm-c... from the 2025 Program Summary for Toronto Paramedic Services, https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/8d5d-2025-... : - Page 3 - Avg 90th Percentile response times have gone…

As far back as 2008, from https://www.ems1.com/ems-products/communications/articles/to..., the article states:

  The snapshot, from Saturday, March 1 to Tuesday, March 4, shows paramedic response times in Toronto are wildly inconsistent even where people could be having heart attacks or strokes.

  In those four days, the city’s ambulance service failed to respond to almost half of Delta calls within the standard response time of eight minutes and 59 seconds.

  A Delta call is the fourth highest in severity in the service’s five level classification system — Echo patients are in the most life-threatening state while Alpha are in the least.

  For all calls, paramedics try to be on scene in under nine minutes but on average that response time is met only 69% of the time.

  Over the four-day period, Echo calls were responded to within the goal response time 100% of the time on only two days.

  On March 1, several Echo calls — which could be for a child not breathing, for example — only hit the standard 66% of the time.

  On March 4, Echo calls received in the afternoon were only responded to in less than nine minutes 33% of the time.

  Worse, paramedics told the Sun, they routinely arrive at calls classified as less serious that turn into more serious calls.

  Almost seven out of 10 people needing an ambulance for a Delta response, like chest pain, between 7 and 10 p.m. March 3 waited more than nine minutes.

  Paramedic union chairman Glenn Fontaine says the documents are more evidence that residents are playing “Russian roulette” when they dial 911.

  Fontaine said every time paramedics fail to get to a scene in less than nine minutes, lives are at risk.

  “That’s the time you need medical intervention if you’re having a medical emergency,” Fontaine said. “These numbers should be 90% and years ago they were.”

  “I hope this isn’t a trend we’re seeing but my fear is it is ... And this (March) is slow time, wait till we get into summer vacation.”

Re: My dad could still be alive, but he's not

#290

Post by [deleted] »

ugh123 wrote: post #5

>my dad is dead, because his family members were too naive to know that the thing they were instructed to do by the state was a false thing. We're told a lot of things by "officials" not because it's correct, but because it holds the least legal liability for official parties involved, especially anything involving healthcare. These officials also sometimes include doctors, who work to protect themselves and the syst…

[deleted]
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