Exclusive West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) has apologised for the ‘distress’ caused to a deceased patient’s GP after a discharge summary blamed general practice for ‘causing problems’.
In April, a GP formally complained to WMAS after an electronic patient record (EPR) it produced blamed general practice for ambulance delays.
The incident, which did not involve GPs, occurred in the West Midlands in March and led to an elderly male patient dying after three calls to 999. The ambulance arrived three hours after the first call was made.
Now a serious incident investigation report, seen by Pulse, said that WMAS ‘recognise[s] and apologise[s] for the distress caused to the patient’s GP’ in reading comments blaming practices for delays.
It said that as part of the investigation, a member of the paramedic-led ambulance crew had ‘completed a statement regarding their wording’ in the electronic patient record (EPR).
The report added: ‘The phrasing used on this EPR has not caused or contributed to patient harm as it came after the patient was already deceased, however, we recognise and apologise for the distress caused to the patient’s GP in reading these comments.’
The EPR, written by the paramedic crew and seen by Pulse, said: ‘Family obviously very upset over lack of ambulance arrival earlier, family showed no animosity to crew, they stated they understood GP surgeries are causing problems and ambulances are having to queue at hospital along with the service being abused.’
In his original complaint, the patient’s GP and Newcastle Central PCN clinical director with a special interest in ambulatory emergency care Dr Omar Hussain said he had spoken to the patient’s family and the comment blaming GPs ‘definitely did not come from them’.
Dr Hussain told Pulse he was ‘grateful’ that WMAS investigated what happened as a serious incident and that he was ‘frustrated but not surprised’ with the report’s findings.
He said: ‘There was a brief mention in the report of an apology towards the practice regarding comments made about GP surgeries.
‘I sincerely hope this is a learning event for the paramedics involved and allows them in future to be more respectful towards colleagues and to challenge the increasing false attitudes and perceptions towards GP surgeries. I have passed this message onto WMAS and hope their management will convey it to all colleagues.’
He added: ‘We all fully understand the huge strain the ambulance service is under and I hope tragic occurrences such as this demonstrate to ambulance management, NHS leaders and the Government [they must] address this as a time critical priority alongside the hospital handover delay issue impacting nationally.
‘As always, primary care will continue to go above and beyond to work as a team and support our NHS colleagues as we always have done.’
READERS' COMMENTS [5]
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Populism polarisation Post truth.. The legacy of 12years of austerity with its devastating effects on people through loss of welfare and reduced public services doubtless compounded by Brexit Covid Energy crisis inflation and mounting government debts as elder care and health needs increase
It is extremely disppointing that the Ambulance Service Management have no insight into the harm caused to the patient’s family, as well as the GP, by the initial comment, and their response to it, along the lines of “it doesn’t matter if we cause animosity between GP and patient’s family, because the patient is already dead”.
This is totally unacceptable.
Whilst demand on ambulance service has risen, and there is always a proportion of unecessary calls to 999, the Management appear to lack insight into how to manage provision of the sevice. You cannot just say “oh, 10% are hoax calls, so we will only supply enough ambilances to answer 90% of calls, whether they are hoax or not”.
The WMAST management are fully responsible for the distress caused to patients, relatives, GPs and Ambulance Paramedics by management’s failure to adequately staff the service!
And one specific paramedic has breached professionalism guidelines and needs re-training or stress-managment input, before goig backon duty, or could harm further patients.
Primary care : shagged
Secondary Care: shagged.
Out of hours : shagged:
Ambulance services : shagged.
CAMHS: shagged.
Labs: Shagged.
Step one: stop forming a circular firing squad and sniping at each other- there is no “sleepy hollow” in the NHS. Everything is SHAGGED and this government is responsible.
This is not an apology either to the patient’s own GP or to GPs in general. The anti GP culture in the NHS comes from the very top. It’s unsurprising though disappointing that others all the way down the management chain follow the line set by the NHS leadership.
Even sadder that GPs, fed up with this sort of remark are likely to retaliate in kind and adopt a counter culture of assuming that eveyone else is shirking while using us as a scapegoat.
Every public facing “servant” is pi**ed off.
What does that tell you? No – it isn’t that fun in the gutter of UK life; it is all a bit blah. It’s pretty dry and hungover. Wait until Tuesday when the country wakes up from it’s slumber.