A distraught Portadown pensioner has spoken out after being forced to hoist her seriously ill husband out of bed for a hospital appointment while ambulance personnel looked on. Frances Craig, 69, hit out at the recently implemented Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) policy which prevents staff from transferring patients using either hoists or slings. Mrs [...]

More than 160 complaints were received by the region’s ambulance service in the final three months of last year. The figures are contained in a quality report to be presented to the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust’s board when it meets on Wednesday. Of the 163 complaints registered during October, November and December, [...]

A merger between Great Western Ambulance Service and South West Ambulance Service could be in operation by October. An update will be received by the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee at a meeting next week following an announcement by the GWAS board in August 2011 that the organisation was not in a position to continue [...]

More people are dialling 999 when they suspect a stroke following a campaign to highlight key symptoms, the Government has said. The Act FAST stroke campaign is intended to show how emergency treatment can reduce the risk of death and disability from stroke, which affects around 150,000 people in the UK every year. Last April [...]

East Midlands Ambulance Service has lost its appeal against a decision not to award it the contract for running non-emergency transport. The regional trust received about £20 million a year for running the Patient Transport Service, with 550 staff involved in the scheme. But health bosses put the contract out to tender last year. NSL [...]

East Midlands ambulance service trust is piloting a new project that allows specially trained paramedics to decide whether patients should be treated at home, or referred to a GP or walk-in centre. The trial is part of the trust’s plans to keep people out of hospital where possible in an effort to cut the strain [...]

A systematic review on ambulance personnel found that ambulance workers have a higher mortality rate, higher level of fatal accidents and higher rate of early retirement on medical grounds than the general working population. However, a survey among ambulance personnel indicates that they report lower levels of anxiety and depression symptoms, and tend to avoid [...]

I was trawling the news sources this morning for items to post on ParamedicUK and was surprised by how many local news stories there were about handover delays at A&E departments at hospitals across the UK. I counted 12 in the past 24 hours!

Having waited regularly for up to 3 hours at my local A&E in the past month it’s clear this is a serious problem that is reducing the number of ambulances available for emergency calls and increasing the workload for single responders and the few ambulances left to deal with calls.

ParamedicUK wants to hear about your experiences. How often do you have long waits at A&E? What is your trust doing about it?

You can leave a comment here or Tweet @ParamedicUK.

Bristol paramedics are set to take part in a study to find the best way of resuscitating patients whose hearts have stopped. Less than a fifth of patients who suffer a cardiac arrest out of hospital currently survive and a study is being held in the city to establish how paramedics might improve rates of [...]

A child died after a faulty satnav caused an ambulance to arrive late, a coroner heard last week. Nine-year-old Corey Seymour suffered heart failure last September following an asthma attack at home. An ambulance took 24 minutes to arrive, despite an eight-minute target response time. West Midlands Ambulance Service has since admitted problems with a [...]