Wife is left distraught as ambulance crew refuse to lift disabled husband Noel
Frances and Noel Craig, Glanroy avenue, Portadown.
A DISTRAUGHT Portadown pensioner has spoken out after being forced to hoist her seriously ill husband out of bed for a hospital appointment while ambulance personnel looked on.
Frances Craig, 69, hit out at the recently implemented Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) policy which prevents staff from transferring patients using either hoists or slings.
Mrs Craig’s husband Noel (70), who is bedridden and is severely paralysed after suffering a stroke, needed ambulance transport to take him from his Glanroy Avenue home to Craigavon hospital last Monday.
The mother-of-three, who suffers from fibromyalgia, said in previous circumstances ambulance staff would have used alternative methods to transfer her husband on to a stretcher, but they did nothing in this instance.
Mrs Craig revealed that she was still in pain from having to lift Noel prior to his hospital visit and on his return, but declined to blame the male and female ambulance crew. A senior NIAS official has since apologised for the “poor standard of care” they received.
“They (ambulance crew) said they were not allowed to touch. They wouldn’t even help me put the sling down his back,” she said. “You can’t blame them. They are only doing what the hierarchy is telling them. They say they will not let the crews use the hoist, but I think that is a load of balderdash.
“They are more fit and strapping to use the hoist than the carers out in the community.”
Describing her husband as a “real dead weight”, Mrs Craig said she still has not recovered from her ordeal. “It is beyond a joke. What would have happened if I had collapsed and hit the ground? Who is going to look after my husband?”
Frances said Noel is due to return to hospital next month and is hoping they will not have to relive last week’s experience.
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Stephen Nolan Show last week, NIAS director of operations Brian McNeill confirmed it was decided last year that staff would no longer use hoists and slings to move patients due to their infrequent use. But he said in Mr Craig’s case “other ways should have been employed and in this occasion we failed”.
Mr McNeill explained that NIAS management would speak to the crew concerned to identify what went wrong. “We can’t allow this to happen to any other patient in the future,” he added.
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Weather for Portadown
Wednesday 23 May 2012
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