Ambulance

[Baby02]

What is an acceptable time to wait for an ambulance if you have broken your hip?

[alijangra]

It depends entirely on what other calls have come in for the ambulances as they have to prioritise, for example a suspected heart attack, stroke, anaphylactic reaction, road traffic accident will be dealt with first. Whilst a broken hip is very painful, it is not immediately life threatening and as long as vital signs are stable then unfortunately it is not top priority in comparison to afore mentioned cases.

[Miss Inquiry]

It might also depend on how old you are, if you have any dependants waiting on you etc... I think there is a time limit they try to get to you within, might be worth having a look on your local health authorities web site??

[Baby02]

Thanks for your replies, I realise that it does depend on certain other factors but just thought it was unacceptable to wait nearly 3 hours given the fact that the person involved was in a nursing home at the time,is peg fed and in a poor state of health anyway.

[Miss Inquiry]

That is terrible, and what is even worse is I am not surprised they had to wait that long. It's appauling!

[soxcox1]

Can I just ask - what area of the country are you in and have you contacted the ambulance service to clarify what happened. Go through their PALS - they can do the ground work for you.
Am asking as I do work alongside ambo staff at times and we had a similar call - it turned out everyone in the nursing home thought everyone else had called 999 when no one had!

[dan_999uk]

A simple broken hip in a private residence or care home would be coded as a green/catagory C call (non-urgent, non-life threatening) for the ambulance service. This puts it at the bottom of the list.

This is not ideal - often ambulances will be going to drunks sleeping in the street before broken hips. This is frustrating for ambulance staff, who are forced to work to dispatch protocols primarily designed to protect the service from legal action.

If you waited 3 hours, I presume you are in London.