Paramedic posts shocking footage of ambulances stuck outside hospital
Fed-up paramedic posts shocking video footage of 22 ambulances stuck in a queue outside hospital for SIX hours as NHS trust apologises saying it has been under ‘sustained pressure’ for several months
- A student paramedic said they were stuck for hours outside Torbay Hospital
- They posted shocking footage of a 22-vehicle queue outside A&E online
- The poster added that they had ‘lost faith’ that the NHS in Devon could be fixed
- The NHS Trust which runs the hospital apologised for the long delays
A fed-up student paramedic who filmed a queue of 22 ambulances has said they were stuck outside the hospital for six hours.
The frustrated medic said that they were at the back of the monster queue and that they had not moved forward in over 6 hours at the Torbay Hospital in Devon.
Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust apologised for the delays and said they were due to the hospital being under ‘sustained pressure’ for several months as a result of the pandemic.
The medic at Torbay Hospital in Devon told DevonLive: ‘Currently at the back of a 22 ambulance queue. No movement in 6 hours. Staff are broken, the hospital is full. This is not sustainable.
‘Patients are being affected and so are staff. The NHS in south Devon just broke. There was time to fix this, I don’t think so anymore.’
Ian Currie, medical director at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, told The Sun: ‘Like many hospitals across the country, we have been under sustained pressure in our emergency department for several months now.
‘Currently extreme pressure is impacting on our ability to admit patients in a timely way which means that ambulances are currently waiting to discharge patients and we are not able to see people as quickly as we would like.
The footage shows a queue of ambulances waiting outside of the Torbay Hospital in Devon
‘We would like to offer our sincere apologies to everyone who is waiting for treatment.
Staff at the hospital are reeling from the fact their Christmas parties were cancelled due to fears over the recently-emerged Omicron Covid variant, according to The Sun.
There have also been reports suggesting that the beleaguered emergency department at the Torbay Hospital is seeing waits of up to 13 hours for treatment.
The student medic who filmed the footage told DevonLive that they had lost faith that the NHS in Devon could be fixed
The Omicron variant is putting even more pressure on the health service as it deals with its regular winter pressures.
The new strain has meant that the NHS is set to scrap yet more routine operations in order for staff to shift their attentions to the UK’s booster vaccine target of 50 million jabs before the end of January, health leaders have warned.
Boris Johnson has promised to offer all 53million eligible adults a booster Covid vaccine by the end of January to shield the nation from the incoming Omicron wave.
Staff shortages and waiting lists already at an all-time high, health chiefs say it will come at the cost of planned operations and health scans.
Re-prioritising the Covid vaccine over tackling the immense NHS care waiting list is a shift in focus from health secretary Sajid Javid who previously said addressing the backlogs were his ‘top priority’ and insisted the country ‘has to learn to live with Covid’, when he was appointed to the role in June.
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