A frail woman who suffers from dementia was forced to wait 18 hours for an ambulance. Susan Nellis, 76, spent the gruelling wait bent over a chair after suffering a back problem.
Susan's GP called for an ambulance at 6.46pm – but paramedics didn’t arrive at her care home until 1pm the next day to take her the 10-mile journey to Vale of Leven Hospital in Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. Susan, a resident of Crosslet House Care Home in Dumbarton, suffers from vascular dementia among other conditions.
As reported by the Daily Record, Susan’s daughter Emma McKerry, 56, said: “The ambulance staff were lovely but by the time they got there my mum was crying and drifting in and out of sleep. She has spine problems and was bent double.
"She was incoherent. She was totally exhausted and white as a sheet. I was really raging. It was traumatic. Elderly people are being let down.”
Scottish Labour health spokeswoman Jackie Baillie said the incident was another example of how Health Secretary Humza Yousaf was failing in his role. She added: “It is shocking older people are having to wait so long for emergency treatment. Humza Yousaf has had enough time to fix this but he is out of his depth.”
The Scottish Ambulance Service said it had received a non-emergency request for Susan. It added: “Unfortunately, due to sustained levels of demand and significant delays in handing patients over at emergency departments in Greater Glasgow & Clyde, there were no available ambulances at that time.
"During the wait for the next available resource, our call handler continued to call to make welfare checks and to see if the call needed to be upgraded from a non-emergency. We’d like to apologise to Mrs Nellis and her family for the wait.”
A Scottish Government spokesman blamed Covid for delays. He added: “The pandemic has heaped pressure on our ambulance service and wider NHS."
