10-20-2022, 05:10 PM
No Hope Service (NHS): Granddad, 94, told operator ‘send the undertaker’ in five hour wait for ambulance (he died)
Kenneth Shadbolt, 94, rang the emergency services after accidentally falling in his Chipping Campden home in the Cotswolds on March 24.
The retired carpenter told the operator at around 3am he suffered a fall in his bathroom and was unable able to get up.
‘Oh, I feel terribly sick. I’m in terrible pain,’ he said, call logs showed, ‘if it’s going on another half an hour I’ll probably be dead.
‘Oh my headache, oh my God. Send me the undertaker, that will be the best bet.’
As the call handler told him an ambulance was coming, Shadbolt’s final words were: ‘Can you please tell them to hurry up or I shall be dead.’
At 8:10am, an ambulance finally arrived and rushed Shadbolt to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital where he died at 2:20pm from a bleed in the brain.
The harrowing call aired on BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 programme yesterday.
A BBC analysis found ambulances in the UK have spent more than a million hours stuck outside A&Es waiting to offload patients.
Some 300,000 patients have potentially been harmed because of the raft of delays between January and September.
Read More: Granddad, 94, told operator ‘send the undertaker’ in five hour wait for ambulance
Kenneth Shadbolt, 94, rang the emergency services after accidentally falling in his Chipping Campden home in the Cotswolds on March 24.
The retired carpenter told the operator at around 3am he suffered a fall in his bathroom and was unable able to get up.
‘Oh, I feel terribly sick. I’m in terrible pain,’ he said, call logs showed, ‘if it’s going on another half an hour I’ll probably be dead.
‘Oh my headache, oh my God. Send me the undertaker, that will be the best bet.’
As the call handler told him an ambulance was coming, Shadbolt’s final words were: ‘Can you please tell them to hurry up or I shall be dead.’
At 8:10am, an ambulance finally arrived and rushed Shadbolt to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital where he died at 2:20pm from a bleed in the brain.
The harrowing call aired on BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 programme yesterday.
A BBC analysis found ambulances in the UK have spent more than a million hours stuck outside A&Es waiting to offload patients.
Some 300,000 patients have potentially been harmed because of the raft of delays between January and September.
Read More: Granddad, 94, told operator ‘send the undertaker’ in five hour wait for ambulance