Ambulance crews faced crucial delays trying to save dying patients in the pandemic because of the time it took to put on protective equipment, the Covid inquiry has been told.<\/p>\n
Ambulance technician Mark Tilley appeared close to tears when he described how the experience still \u00ab\u00a0played on his mind\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0I bottle things away. I’m told quite a lot of times I’m cold. I just deal with it in the way that I deal with it,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
During the pandemic, some ambulance staff moved into budget hotels for weeks at a time to avoid putting family members in danger, he added.<\/p>\n
Mr Tilley, who works for South East Coast Ambulance Service, was giving evidence as a representative of the GMB union.<\/p>\n
In January 2021, at the peak of the winter wave of the pandemic, he volunteered to move to Sittingbourne, in north Kent, for three weeks, along with 40 colleagues.<\/p>\n
A new variant of Covid which appeared to transmit more quickly had recently emerged in the area, and hospitals were coming under increased pressure.<\/p>\n
He told the inquiry that, on one occasion, he had to queue in his ambulance outside A&E for an entire ten-hour shift because there was not enough room to transfer a \u201cheavily deteriorating\u201d patient into the building.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’d run out of oxygen, so we’d had to scan the hospital to try and find [more],\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u201cWe ordered pizza to the vehicle because otherwise we wouldn’t have had anything to eat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because of lockdown rules at the time, volunteer ambulance crews were sleeping in a budget hotel, with some deciding not to return home to avoid placing family members in danger.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0You had nowhere to go, so it was just the facilities that were there: the television and a phone,\u00a0\u00bb he said.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0You had 12 hours [after your shift] to mull over what you’d been seeing; the queues at the hospital, the poor patients.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
In his testimony, Mr Tilley described arriving at residential homes where patients were dying \u00ab\u00a0inside the front window or on the pathway\u201d.<\/p>\n
Under guidance, paramedics and other ambulance staff were told they had to wait until arriving at the scene before they could put on plastic Tyvek suits and protective hoods or masks.<\/p>\n
He said that could cost crews a crucial minute and a half before they were able to start treatment: \u201cI would have normally gone over and started bouncing up and down on their chest [to perform CPR].<\/p>\n
\u201cBut [instead] we went and got our masks and suits on and all of that \u2013 that plays on my mind all the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, you can’t change history no matter what you talk about, it\u2019s history. We can\u2019t change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Counsel to the inquiry Alice Hands said research commissioned by the inquiry had revealed similar accounts, with other ambulance crews saying they were \u201cforced not to intervene\u2026 and watch people die\u201d while they put on equipment.<\/p>\n
In his evidence, Anthony Marsh, national ambulance adviser to NHS England and former chairman of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, said he was aware of those concerns at the time and did raise the matter with senior colleagues.<\/p>\n
But he said allowing crews to put on PPE when they were travelling to the scene to cut the total response time would \u201cnot have been safe\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ambulance crews faced crucial delays trying to save dying patients in the pandemic because of the time it took to put on protective equipment, the Covid inquiry has been told. Ambulance technician Mark Tilley appeared close to tears when he described how the experience still \u00ab\u00a0played on his mind\u00a0\u00bb. \u00ab\u00a0I bottle things away. I’m told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}