Instead they are offering a diagnosis over the phone which care home managers say is unsatisfactory and dangerous.

In one case, care home records show a GP refused or reluctantly made a visit to a man suffering from pneumonia on three occasions.

The British Medical Association told the BBC it agreed the quality of care given to care homes could vary.

Debbie Dean told the BBC’s Radio 5 live Investigates programme that her family struggled to get a GP to come out to see her 71-year-old father as he lay suffering from pneumonia in a care home in Stoke-on-Trent.

Cecil Dean was suffering from lung disease and mild dementia. There were problems with getting him on the right medication and setting his oxygen levels.

via BBC News.

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 Craig’s husband Noel (70), who is bedridden and is severely paralysed after suffering a stroke, needed ambulance transport to take him from his Glanroy Avenue home to Craigavon hospital last Monday.

The mother-of-three, who suffers from fibromyalgia, said in previous circumstances ambulance staff would have used alternative methods to transfer her husband on to a stretcher, but they did nothing in this instance.

Mrs Craig revealed that she was still in pain from having to lift Noel prior to his hospital visit and on his return, but declined to blame the male and female ambulance crew. A senior NIAS official has since apologised for the “poor standard of care” they received.

via Portadown Times.

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, 42 were related to patient care.

The report to the board, prepared by associate director of clinical quality Jill Moseley, explains that “attitude and clinical care” remain consistent themes of the complaints received.

The report continues: “When reviewed, 21% of these complaints relate to inadequate patient assessment, 24% were regarding the treatment provided, and a further 21% related to the decision of the crew not to convey the patient to hospital.

“The Trust saw an increase in complaints relating to delay in October, November and December – 65 (40% of the total complaints received by the Trust) of which 59 were in emergency care operations.”

via Anglian Daily Times.

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 its work to become a foundation trust in its own right and would look for a partner to achieve this.

GWAS director of nursing Liam Williams said: “The preferred option is for GWAS to be acquired by SWASFT – they are already a foundation trust, they are a high performing trust and have a history of being so, they have similar operational and clinical priorities and share a number of geographic boundaries with a steady patient flow across those boundaries.

via Swindon Advertiser.

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 and May, after the adverts finished running, the NHS in England saw a 24% rise in stroke-related 999 calls, to 229,974. The Department of Health said there was also a 16% rise in stroke sufferers being seen more quickly.

Introduced under Labour in 2009, the campaign has run on an annual basis, with new adverts planned to run from the end of this month to March 25.

After the first 2009 campaign, there was a 16% rise in 999 calls, followed by a 20% rise in 2010.

The campaign urges people to look out for the following signs and call 999 if they spot a single one: Facial weakness – can the person smile? Has their mouth or eye drooped? Arm weakness – can the person raise both arms? Speech problems – can the person speak clearly and understand what you say? Time – to call 999 for an ambulance if any one of these signs occurs.

via The Press Association.

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 Ltd was identified as the preferred bidder for the contracts in Derbyshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, while Arriva Passenger Services won the deal for Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The ambulance trust lodged an appeal but has now confirmed it had not been upheld. Trust chief executive Phil Milligan said: “This is very disappointing news for all our Patient Transport Service staff and volunteers in the county who, like me, were hoping for a different outcome.

via This is Derbyshire.

The trial is part of the trust’s plans to keep people out of hospital where possible in an effort to cut the strain on A&E, and help improve ambulance response rates to emergency calls.

If rolled out fully, emergency care practitioners – paramedics with an extended set of university qualifications – would view 999 calls on a computer-aided dispatch system at the trust’s emergency operation centre in Lincoln, and select the jobs that they believe would normally result in an ambulance taking the patient to accident and emergency.

via Guardian Professional.

Thanks to @steviespuduk for the tweet.

Read the full report at European Working Conditions Observatory.

Thanks to @steviespuduk for the tweet.

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.

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 survival after the heart has stopped.

It is already known that the best way of resuscitating a patient after a cardiac arrest is to give continuous chest compressions and a tube put down the windpipe to rescue their breathing, known as tracheal intubation. But inserting a tube into the windpipe can be difficult.

New devices have become available to rescue a patient’s breathing after a cardiac arrest that tend to be easier to administer but it is not known if they can improve chances of survival.

The team at University of the West of England (UWE), Great Western Ambulance Service (GWAS) and University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust (UHBristol) is trying to establish the best way of doing this so that national and international guidelines can be drawn up.

The research project will start next month and 180 GWAS paramedics have been recruited to take part. In one of the biggest studies of its kind the NHS ambulance staff will use the three different devices on cardiac arrest patients and their survival will be followed up. If the initial pilot works it is likely that it will then be extended to other parts of the country to gather more evidence.

via This is Bristol.