“We don’t want any more families to go through devastating NHS delays”

This blog is written by Mike, a Just Treatment supporter based in Greater Manchester.

In April 2022, we lost our wonderful daughter Allyson. She had been suffering from a sarcoma - a rare form of cancer - which had spread from an unknown location into her spine and lungs. Throughout her illness, the care she had received through her GP and at the Christie Hospital was absolutely fantastic. 

However, in the final day of her life, Allyson experienced absolutely devastating delays to emergency care that she so desperately needed. I am telling her story because I want to see change that will stop this happening to other families in future. 

Allyson received her sarcoma diagnosis in February 2022, at the age of just 33. This was of course a huge shock to her and to the entire family. Due to the severity of her form of cancer, we knew she was never going to get a cure. So her medical team were pursuing palliative care in an effort to give her several years more of life. 

She responded well to her first round of chemo, and her health showed good progress. As a result, after several months spent in hospital, she was allowed to come home to us for a week. I remember just how happy she was to be home, how she beamed at us when she was coming out of the ambulance. We had a wonderful week with her, and she was able to spend time not just with family but with friends and colleagues too. 

Unfortunately, during her last night at home, she woke up feeling unwell. As the night progressed her condition deteriorated. After liaising with the Christie, it was decided that she needed to attend our local hospital and an ambulance was called through 999. Agonisingly, it took nearly four hours for the ambulance to arrive.

When two paramedics arrived, they described her as “very ill”, which felt like an understatement. As a nurse myself at the time I had repeatedly called the ambulance service as I was worried that the situation was becoming critical. Once the decision was made to take my daughter in, the two crew members were unable to slide her onto the trolley, and so a second crew was called. They took around half an hour, further adding to the delay. Eventually, she arrived at A&E around 6 hours after the first call. 

The teams at the hospital did everything they could, but my daughter was septic, and died during the night. She was only 33, just engaged, with her whole life ahead of her. 

It is extremely difficult to think about what Allyson went through in those final few hours of her life. No patient should have to wait so long for emergency medical help, but especially not someone who was already so medically vulnerable.

We absolutely do not blame the health workers, who did what they could for Allyson on that day. And we will forever be grateful to every single NHS staff member who provided wonderful care for her during her hospital treatment. 

But these delays to urgent care should not be happening, and something must be done. As someone who worked for years as an NHS nurse, I have seen firsthand the increasing pressures being placed upon our health service which are putting patients’ lives at risk.

I ultimately ended up retiring 3 years early from nursing because the pressure was simply too much. I saw more and more managers being installed who increased the strain on frontline workers. Most nights we were working with bank and agency staff, moving patients in the middle of the night to make room for emergencies. Many patients were stuck in hospital because they had nowhere to go, as community care has been decimated. 

Just recently my wife had a pulmonary embolism, which was a very scary experience. Once again the care she received in hospital was amazing, but we could see there was an area where several dozen paramedics were with patients who had nowhere to go - so they had no choice but to treat people in the back of the ambulances. 

Neither staff nor patients should be being put in these kinds of situations. It doesn’t have to be this way, and things would change if politicians chose to invest in the frontline of our health service.

The reality is, we have an ageing population in Britain, which means demand on the health service will only get higher. Therefore, even just to “stand still”, we’ve got to increase spending - let alone starting to actually tackle the backlogs and the dangerous delays to urgent care. 

As well as service delivery, money needs investing in infrastructure too - we simply cannot wait for our creaking and crumbling facilities to collapse completely. Alongside this, it’s vital that we respect all NHS staff - from doctors and nurses to cleaners and porters. After years and years of real terms cuts, they all deserve a fair and decent wage uplift. We need money for frontline workers, not high paid managers. 

Finally, we must end the wasteful and dangerous practice of outsourcing NHS services to private health providers. This is seeing hundreds of millions of pounds pouring out of our public health service and into the pockets of profit-making companies who do not have the best interests of patients at heart. I have seen so many times in my career examples of patients who have been seen privately for certain treatments, only to have to go back to the NHS if and when stuff goes wrong. These providers do not have a commitment to duty of care, and the NHS is having to pick up the pieces. 

For the sake of NHS patients and staff, both now and in the future, the new government must not repeat the same mistakes of the past 14 years. We need increased investment, fair pay for staff and an end to outsourcing, so that we can truly tackle the crisis in our NHS and protect the health and lives of patients.