December 9, 2022 7.00 pm This story is over 21 months old

Patients in Lincolnshire ‘let down’ when they needed emergency NHS help

Two patients have spoken out about their experiences

Two Lincolnshire patients have spoken out after being ‘let down’ when they needed emergency help from the NHS.

Catherine Fahey relies on medication after a stroke at her home in Heighington, near Lincoln, in September.

When her husband Kyle called 999 he was told it would be two hours for an ambulance, so he gave her a fireman’s lift to the car, getting her to hospital just in time to get medication to stop her paralysis from being permanent.

Kyle told BBC Look North: “It was scary, it does make you think, is the NHS working still? By all means the hospital is, we received second-to-none care. Obviously it’s the emergency side of it, getting us up there, that they’ve failed.”

Catherine Fahey is one of two patients who told her story to BBC Look North after being ‘let down’ when she needed emergency help from the NHS. | Screenshot: BBC Look North

EMAS told BBC Look North they are “deeply sorry” but due to experiencing “immense, sustained pressure” on its service, it is prioritising the “sickest and most severely injured patients”.

Joan Stuck, 78, was left feeling “absolutely disgusted”. An ambulance arrived in minutes when she fell ill in October, but she then spent eight hours stuck in the back of it, parked outside Lincoln’s A&E until there was room to get her into the hospital.

Joan Stuck, 78, was left feeling “absolutely disgusted” after her experience. | Screenshot: BBC Look North

She told BBC Look North: “After eight hours, I was taken out into the hospital corridor where I was for five hours, and then eventually they took me to a plaster room. I’m absolutely disgusted. To be treated that way I think is appalling.”

The United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) said its emergency departments “remain extremely busy” and it’s “sorry about the delays”, but is “doing everything they can to care for our patients.”

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