A pensioner run over by a car had to wait THREE HOURS for an ambulance as she lay in agony outside a supermarket.
Grandmother Karen Barnes, 60, was forced to wait face-down on the “cold wet floor” after she was hit by the vehicle in the Aldi car park in Sittingbourne, Kent.
She then waited another two hours in the trauma department and, almost 24 hours after the accident, she was still waiting in A&E at Medway Hospital.
The local ambulance service said they couldn’t attend to Mrs Barnes because they were “very busy” and couldn’t respond to calls that were “not immediately life-threatening”.
Her disgusted daughter Vikki Young, who was with her mother as she waited in vain for the amublance, posted a picture on Facebook to highlight how long her mum had waited.
She said: “This is how my poor mum laid as she waited three hours for an ambulance.
“Three hours she laid on the cold wet floor of a car park after being hit by a car.
“I knew the NHS were stretched, but this is just disgusting.”
Mrs Young, of Rainham, Kent, said a passer-by first called an ambulance after the incident at 10.30am.
She said: “It was a passer-by who first called the ambulance and was told they would send someone as soon as they could, but warned they were over-stretched.
“After 45 minutes, which I thought was a long time, I called again, and was told they were trying to get someone out to us.
“But even though she was high-risk there were other patients who were a priority because they were unconscious or not breathing.
“Mum didn’t lose consciousness, but she wasn’t far from it.
“She was freezing and when she moved she was in a lot of pain.”
Mrs Young said at 1.30pm a response car arrived, but the medic could only give her mum painkillers.
She said: “When the ambulance car arrived he was able to give mum paracetamol through a cannula and put heat pads on her, but he could not move her until the ambulance arrived.
“When they got to Medway Hospital the ambulance staff had to wait an hour with mum because there was nowhere for her to go.
“That’s an hour that the crew and the ambulance were off the road.
“And there were several other ambulance crews with other patients.”
Mrs Barnes was eventually given an x-ray and told she had suffered a broken pelvis.
Her daughter added: “The poor hospital staff were amazing but they looked run ragged.
“It was chaos.”
“When I asked when mum would go on a ward, the nurse told me they were at 100 per cent capacity, there were no beds anywhere.”
“She’s recovering in a ward now and doctors say she’ll be here for another two days.
“She’s a very strong woman and is in good spirits, but I can tell underneath it all she really is in a lot of pain.
“The doctors said there’s little they can do to fix a broken pelvis quickly and we just have to wait until she can get up and walk around again.
“At the moment she is in too much pain to get up, which is really hard for us to witness.”
Said said doctors had been working hard to help her mum recover.
She added: “Everyone on the ward has been fantastic and we’re so grateful for all the help they’ve given us.”
A South East Coast Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We are very sorry it took us longer than we would like to attend this call and would invite the family to contact us direct in order to look into their concerns in more detail.
“We are, along with the NHS as a whole, very busy, meaning is taking us longer than usual to attend some incidents, and in particular calls which are not immediately life-threatening.”
