We are not sure about how well out-of-hours public care services are being run or what priority is being given to the elderly.
Recently we visited a client for his evening call around 7pm but during the visit he began to feel unwell and collapsed into a dining chair. The Care Worker attending him could not get him to stand because his legs could not bear the weight. We requested another Care Worker to come to his assistance but still we were unable to get him up. For safety we do not carry people without the proper lifting equipment which the emergency services carry.
Unable to get the man out of the chair we called the emergency services to attend to him. He is someone who has been in and out of hospital because of his frail condition. The emergency services would not attend because they did not view his condition as life threatening and because there was no blood. They suggested that the out-of-hours doctor be called. On calling the out-of-hours doctor at around 10pm we were told that the doctor would come out in 2 to 6 hours, we stressed that the poor man was not sitting very comfortably in a hardback chair so they promised to come as soon as they could.
The doctor duly arrived around midnight but because he, also, has a policy of not lifting patients then after checking his medical condition that he was best admitted to hospital. The doctor contacted the emergency services and they eventually took the man to hospital around 3am. The man had in total been sitting uncomfortably in a chair for 8 hours, is this anyway to treat the elderly?
As a private organisation we hear of people not being happy that for profit organisations are involved in health care, but, we think this shows that there is a place for private organisations that can spend 8 hours with a man that no public service could do at the time.