Chippenham MP teaming up with constituent to tackle ambulance delays
Lib Dem MP Sarah Gibson has returned to work after being rushed to hospital over Christmas
A Wiltshire MP is vowing to tackle extended wait times for ambulances after her own stay in hospital.
Chippenham's Sarah Gibson has returned to Westminster for the first time since before Christmas, after being rushed to hospital on Boxing Day.
The Lib Dem MP suffered an inflamed heart and spent two weeks at Bath's Royal United Hospital, including time in Intensive Care.
"It's very nice to get back," Sarah said, adding that she'd been working a phased return to duty, focussing on the most urgent issues in her constituency.
She said that, up until last week, she hadn't had the energy required to meet her Westminster role.
An ambulance service 'waiting around' when they could be saving lives
But now that she's firing on all cylinders again, Sarah is teaming up with one of her constituents to reduce waiting times for ambulances in Wiltshire.
When Sarah suffered her heart-related emergency, NHS 111 called for an ambulance and it arrived in minutes.
But for Jemma, one of Sarah's Chippenham constituents, her father was forced to wait more than an hour for an ambulance for his own heart-related emergency.
Jemma's father died before the ambulance arrived.
Sarah told us the general issue is getting patients discharged, which became apparent to her during her hospital stay.
"It was very noticeable when I was in the hospital come Saturday night where suddenly A&E was absolutely full," she said, continuing: "There were not enough beds for them to move people out of A&E and to other wards, and therefore to discharge ambulances."
It means an ambulance response time is sandbagged by the time it takes to move people through the hospital system.
Sarah says there is often not enough guarantee of care once a person is discharged, meaning a patients return home is held up.
She said: "It's ridiculous that a well qualified, hugely dedicated ambulance service are standing around for an hour or so waiting outside a hospital when they could be saving people's lives."
Sarah and Jemma are meeting with local health bosses from the Integrated Care Board to discuss tackling the issue at hospital's serving Wiltshire patients and to rally volunteers to aid in the discharging process.