Thursday 16 June 2022 11:40 PM NHS Ambulance crisis: Grandfather Kenneth Shadbolt tells 999 call handler to ... trends now
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A grandfather begged an ambulance call handler ‘please tell them to hurry up or I shall be dead’ after dialling 999 for the third time.
Otherwise the best bet would be to ‘send me the undertaker’, Kenneth Shadbolt told the operator.
But it took four more hours for an ambulance to reach the 94-year-old’s home, by which time he had lost consciousness. He was rushed to hospital but died that day.
Yesterday his family shared a harrowing transcript of his three 999 calls.
They spoke out as a safety watchdog demanded an ‘immediate’ response to stop patients dying unnecessarily.
Kenneth Shadbolt, 94, spent more than five hours lying on the floor after he fell at his home in Chipping Campden on March 24. He called 999 shortly before 3am and again at 3.15. At 4.16am he made his final call where he told the call handler: 'Can you please tell them to hurry up or I shall be dead. Send me the undertaker, that would be the best bet'
Mr Shadbolt was assessed as a category two emergency meaning paramedics should arrive at his home within 18 minutes