By EMS1 Staff
DEVON, England —A 94-year-old woman had to wait four hours for an ambulance ride after falling and breaking her shoulder and ribs.
Plymouth Herald reported that Vera Vermigle fell at the nursing home where she lives, and the South Western Ambulance Service Foundation Trust told staff she was a low priority because she was safe and had staff to treat her.
“The care home staff said an ambulance had been called and everything would be fine and not to worry,” Vermigle’s daughter-in-law, Allison, said. “We got back to Plymouth at around 5:45 p.m. and she was still there, screaming in pain. She’s 94 and she has dementia, she had fallen against the wall with her arm out and she’d become wedged between the bed and the wall.”
The staff at the nursing home said they originally tried to move her to ease her pain, but paramedics told them not to move her again.
“I then rang the ambulance to find out where they were and was told Vera wasn’t a priority,” Allison added. “I must have called 10 times and in the background you could just hear Vera screaming.”
When Vermigle finally reached the hospital, she had to wait another seven hours for a bed.
“From the moment the accident happened to the moment she was found a bed was over 12 hours,” Allison said. “I’m disgusted.”
“Managing the demand on the ambulance service across the South West can be very challenging and we must prioritize our responses and our ambulance resources according to clinical need, so that our most poorly patients receive the most urgent response,” a South Western Ambulance NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said. “Sometimes this means that less poorly patients do not get the response that we would wish. The patient was indoors, in a safe place with care home staff available.”
The spokesperson added that 28 higher-priority calls were taking place at the time of the incident.
“We were really sorry to hear about Vera’s experience on Saturday evening and do recognize that her wait for a bed was longer than it should have been,” hospital spokesperson Jayne Glynn said. “We have now been in touch with Vera’s family to apologize for this and to discuss their concerns directly with them.”