Crying grandmother begged family to let her die after 33-hour wait on hospital trolley

A 92-year-old crying grandmother asked her family to let her die as she waited for 33 hours on a trolley for a hospital bed.

Graeme Smith, 37, told the Liverpool Echo of his grandmother’s agonising wait. An ambulance was called to her care home on New Year’s Eve after she became unwell, though it took “hours” to arrive. Eventually, she arrived at Aintree University Hospital at 9pm.

However, Smith’s grandmother was left in a corridor with “about 40 other elderly or very sick people” until approximately 6am on 2 January when she was moved onto a ward. “She was very distressed after a while. She was crying and telling us she wanted to die”, he remarked.

“She was praying and asking to be taken. I’ve never heard her say anything like that before.”

Mr Smith acknowledged that patients were being treated “as well as staff could manage” but stated that “a number of them were in distress.” He labelled the experience “horrendous”, with some ill patients unable to have their basic needs met.

Amidst a crisis in NHS conditions, the Government is blaming high numbers of flu cases, Covid-19 and Strep A for the pressures faced over the Christmas period.

In his first major speech of 2023, Rishi Sunak remarked that patients are not getting the “care they deserve”, warning that “something has to change.”

“At a time when we’re putting record sums into the NHS and recruiting record numbers of doctors and nurses, healthcare professionals are still unable to deliver the care they want and patients aren’t receiving the care they deserve”, Sunak stated.

He urged that the Government will “protect” the founding principle of an NHS free at the point of use but suggested that the health service should utilise private hospitals more “if that’s what it takes to get patients quicker and better care.”

In November 2022, NHS waiting times for routine hospital treatments hit a record high, with approximately 7.1 million people waiting to begin treatment at the end of September.

In December 2022, one-quarter of ambulance patients waited for more than an hour to be transferred to A&E for care. Four in 10 patients had to wait at least 30 minutes, with nursing leaders warning that the NHS is “dangerously close to overheating completely.”

According to new ONS figures, excess deaths in the week leading up to Christmas were the highest in two years.