"Delays in getting to hospital"

To cut a long story short: My mum broke her hip and her collar bone at home, in Edinburgh, in a fall. She is in her 80s and this is a fairly common situation. However, what happened next has shocked our whole family and I feel everyone needs to be made aware of this so that we, as the British/Scottish public, can push for positive change so that this does not happen to anyone else.

We tried to get through to NHS24, but couldn’t. We knew an ambulance was required so phoned 999. The ambulance call handler/controller asked all the usual questions. As medical professionals ourselves, we were very specific about my mum’s injuries, and could give more detailed information than most folk could have done. To our shock and amazement, the call handler very bluntly said they will not be sending an ambulance and told us to phone NHS24.

We eventually got through to NHS24 (took about 20 minutes) answered a whole load more questions and were then put through to a medic on the phone who further assessed the situation and agreed that an ambulance was required but did not give any estimated time of arrival.

Every couple of hours after that we got a phone call from the Ambulance Service, checking that my mum had not got any worse (she was in discomfort and pain). At some point, perhaps around 6 hrs after it had been stated that an ambulance would be sent, a paramedic phoned to check and said they had been extremely busy but even so was surprised it had taken so long to get to my Mum. They checked and said that the medic at NHS24 had classed mum as non-urgent and that was the reason for the delay. They then said that there were only three calls ahead of Mum now and it would not be long.

Another 4 hours passed before the ambulance crew arrived - i.e. 10 hrs in total!

This is not a complaint at the paramedics or indeed the Ambulance Service – they were great and really helpful. This is a complaint about the whole system which assessed it was acceptable for this to happen. It appears to be acceptable in Scotland’s capital city (not a remote island or similar) to cause an elderly lady with two significant broken bones to be left for ten hours before being taken to hospital. The medical staff we have spoken to since have all been surprised that this happened to my Mum.

In my view, this is just not right or acceptable and needs to change.