One in four ambulance staff say patients have 'died waiting'

More than 24% said they had witnessed the death of a patient over the past three years due to delays. 

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Four out of five respondents said they had suffered verbal abuse, with a third reporting they had been physically attacked.

The GMB said its study revealed that seven out of 10 ambulance staff surveyed, including paramedics, control centre workers and 999 and 111 call handlers, have considered leaving the service in the past year.

One worker described being first on the scene at a cardiac arrest, which had been coded 'yellow' for 10 hours, to find the patient dead, in rigor mortis with the phone ringing in his hands.

Other workers described patients regularly dying in hospital corridors, patients being left for days outside in ambulances, and being told it would be quicker for them to make their own way to hospital, and then dying on route.

One worker said they knew of "numerous cases where patients have died inside the hospital whist queueing in the corridor", adding that they were "not enough staff to monitor" them. 

Another respondent said they knew of a case where the ambulance crew were instructed by the 999 control room to leave a patient on a stretcher in the hospital corridor, only for them to be found dead 30 minutes later when the nurse went to check on them. 

In another case, a woman had called for an ambulance for her husband who was experiencing breathing difficulties.

It was rated 'urgent', but two hours later he stopped breathing and paramedics - once they arrived - were unable to resuscitate. 

(Image: PA)

Around one in every 10 ambulances is waiting more than an hour and a half outside A&E departments (Image: PA)

Respondents said some patients with hip fractures had been "left for days outside in ambulances". 

In one case where the alarm was raised about the welfare of a patient with mental health problems, there was an eight-hour delay in the ambulance reaching them at home by which point they had "committed suicide by suffocation by the time we had arrived". 

In another case, a patient with chest pain died in the back of the car en route to hospital after their family were told it "would be quicker to drive themselves" rather than wait for an ambulance, while another patient advised to drive themselves to hospital suffered a fatal cardiac arrest in the car park on arrival. 

The Herald previously reported on the case of Gerard Brown, a frail pensioner who died 40 hours after his family had called for an ambulance. 

According to the most recent Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) statistics, one in 10 ambulances arriving outside A&E in the week to June 2 waited more than one hour and 34 minutes to offload patients. 

This is down from a peak of two hours in January. 

Waiting times in A&E have increased sharply compared to before the pandemic (Image: PHS)

As of April this year, one in 20 patients was spending more than 12 hours in A&E - a major cause of overcrowding in emergency departments.

Most of the delays are caused by a lack of available beds on hospital wards for patients requiring admission.

Rachel Harrison, GMB national officer, said: "These terrible, harrowing stories from our ambulance worker members lay bare the horrifying state of our NHS.

"Whoever wins the election next month, we need to properly invest in our NHS if we want to keep it alive - and that starts first and foremost by investing in the workers themselves."