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A beloved nurse died after waiting more than two hours for an ambulance after repeated calls to 999 for help.
David Earle, a father of four, who spent his life working for the NHS, died in hospital on January 23, 2019, after three calls were made to 999 to help him.
The 60-year-old from Wirral, who lived just minutes from Royal Liverpool Hospital, suffered cardiac arrest at the hospital after complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath on emergency calls.
His ex-wife Kim Evans, a nurse, said: “My children are absolutely distraught. I’m sorry for what you gave the NHS, he deserved much better.”
“Even if he couldn’t be saved, he could have been given medicine to make him feel more comfortable.
“I feel like I was very disappointed.
“I would never attack the NHS, I have given it my whole life, but no one should suffer like this at the end of their life, no one.”
(Image: Kim Evans)
The Northwest Ambulance Service classified David’s case as a serious incident and has written to apologize to Ms. Evans.
A spokesperson said he acknowledged that “it must have been a very distressing ordeal” for David’s family and said that “we recognize that the care we provided to Mr. Earle did not reach the level of service we would expect.”
Kim, who was married to David for 24 years before divorcing, said he lived on Wedgewood Street, a short distance from Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
She told ECHO that on the day David died she had called her brother for help and told him that he was not feeling well.
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The grandmother said: “She had contacted her brother to say that she was not feeling very well and that her brother had gone there. They dialed 999 to say that she had chest pain and that it was difficult for her to breathe.
“There was a second call later from a neighbor and they said ‘for the love of God, if you don’t show up soon, this man is going to be dead.’
“And then they waited a total of two hours, 12 minutes and called 999 three times.
(Image: Kim Evans)
“When they got to him, they realized how bad he was and they put him in the ambulance. He was only at the Royal for 11 minutes before going into cardiac arrest and dying.
“They disappointed him in everything, the call must have been category 1, due to the symptoms he had.
“He was minutes from the Royal and could have been saved.”
A call was first made to the emergency services at 4.09 pm, where David was observed to have difficulty breathing.
In a letter to Kim, NWAS said: “The information provided generated a Category 2 response, which means we should have seen Mr. Earle in 18 minutes.”
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He also noted that the day David died it was “exceptionally busy” for the ambulance personnel.
It read: “This was an exceptionally busy day for us and the number of calls we were receiving at the time exceeded our supply of paramedics and ambulances. On this day, we were experiencing some staff failures as a result of illness and going out.
He added: “Under the Category 2 coding, there were no vehicles available to dispatch before the ambulance that treated Mr. Earle.”
(Image: Kim Evans)
“All ambulances were either properly compromised or not available properly in accordance with our lunch break policy, as staff had not been able to take their mandatory break at the beginning of the shift due to demand for waiting incidents.”
David’s cause of death was later ruled a pulmonary embolism, but Kim said he wishes he had been given medication to make him feel more comfortable in his last moments.
He also claimed that while David was out of breath, he was asked to leave his house by going down the stairs on his butt.
She said: “He would have known he was dying and they could have given him at least medication to make him feel comfortable.”
“It’s the suffering that I know I would have been through [which is the worst].
“He has given so much of his life to the NHS, but I can’t let it go, I’m totally traumatized by it.
(Image: Kim Evans)
“It’s a catalog or mistakes. As a nurse, I’m well aware that if you have someone who is extremely out of breath, you can’t get them to bounce down the stairs on their butt.
“He couldn’t breathe, he had chest pain and they forced him down the stairs himself. He probably would have refused help if they had helped him, but as a healthcare professional, you evaluate that and make that decision away from the person.”
NWAS said it has since identified areas of learning in the way David’s calls were handled.
Kim said David’s death has left the family helpless and that his four children miss him greatly.
Paying tribute to him, she said: “He was a very jovial guy. I met him when he was doing his training and our relationship started in the 1980s. His colleagues loved him very much.
“His language was very colorful and very loving. He loved his children and his family very much.
(Image: Kim Evans)
“He spent his entire life working for the NHS and spent a lot of time working in local nursing homes in the Wirral. He worked very hard for his children and dedicated his life to being a nurse and a loving father.”
“He was very kind and compassionate and gave his whole life to care for others.”
A spokesperson for the Northwest Ambulance Service (NWAS) said: “We would like to extend our condolences to Mr. Earle’s family and acknowledge that this must have been a very distressing ordeal for them.
“When Mr. Earle’s family notified us of this incident, it was marked and recorded as a ‘serious incident,’ and as a result, we conducted a thorough investigation.
“The trust identified areas of learning in the way the call was handled and in the time it took to send an ambulance to Mr. Earle.
“We recognize that the care we provided to Mr. Earle was far below the standard of service we would expect.
“We are very sorry that this time we did not respond to Mr. Earle adequately.”
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