A man fighting for his life had to be treated on the side of the road in Connemara by his GP who had been given an estimated arrival time for an ambulance of 57 minutes.
In a letter to the Minister for Health, Dr Peter Sloane reveals that on one occasion last year the response time was 120 minutes when the ambulance had to come from Roscommon to Carraroe. Pleading with Minister Simon Harris to personally intervene, Dr Sloane said he placed a call for an ambulance at 11.30pm on Saturday, May 27.
“This was for an absolute potentially life threatening acute illness in a 60-year-old man. If an ambulance had been in Carraroe, it would have been with the gentleman in approximately ten minutes. Unfortunately, as is frequently the case, no ambulance staff were available in Carraroe and the estimated arrival time for the ambulance was 57 minutes,” he wrote.
“As I attended the emergency at the dark side of the road in South Connemara with my self-funded equipment and giving the patient oxygen which I have to pay for myself, I wondered, how can an estimated time of arrival for an emergency ambulance of 57 minutes be considered satisfactory?
“I really believed that the patient in question would die at the side of the road in South Connemara. Fortunately, the ambulance arrived and the patient was stabilized and transported to University Hospital Galway”.
As one of four GPs in the South Connemara area covering Carraroe, Lettermore, Lettermullen, Rosmuc and the surrounding hinterland, Dr Sloane’s concerns over ambulance times are just one of a large number of frustrations which are contributing to the poor morale among rural doctors.
See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.
The post Lack of ambulance cover sees patient treated on side of the road appeared first on Connacht Tribune.