NHS Wales: Waiting eight hours in an ambulance in hospital car park

“The new normal” – eight hour wait times in ambulances outside A&E.

BBC journalist Colette Hume waited eight hours with her partner’s father in the back of an ambulance at the Grange University Hospital, in Cwmbran, after he suffered a stroke.

But the paramedic claimed it to be a daily occurrence, as she looked across the car park at fifteen ambulances, filled with patients waiting for a bed inside the hospital.

The incident happened just 24 hours since the first minister Eluned Morgan said she wants to hold NHS bosses to account over long waiting lists on Sunday.

Lee Brooks, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s executive director of operations, said: “The issue and consequence of patient handover delays outside hospital emergency departments is well reported, as is the cause.”

He said they did not accept that handover delays were the “new normal” and were “working hard to find solutions to the challenges as well as looking at evolving our current service model further”.

A spokesperson for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board said: “We are continuing to work with our colleagues in the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust to ensure the timely transfer of patients from their ambulance into our care so we can release ambulance crews as quickly as possible to enable them to respond to emergency calls in our community.”

Video filmed by Colette Hume and edited by Greg Davies.