A PARTIALLY paralysed 79-year-old, who worked as a nurse at Brentwood's Highwood Hospital for around 30 years, was forced to wait two-and-a-quarter hours for an ambulance after collapsing at home.
Margaret Day, who cannot speak and lost the feeling in the right-side of her body following a stroke six years ago, fell while using the toilet on Saturday afternoon.
Her carers, who were with her at her home in Kensington Road, Pilgrims Hatch, when she took her tumble, called for an ambulance at 5.14pm, only to be told their call was not urgent and they would have to wait.
Mrs Day's son Richard then called 999 twice from his home in Church Road, Mountnessing, but without success.
Paramedics finally arrived at 7.31pm after Mr Day contacted the police to see if they could help.
The 60-year-old said it was "disgusting" that his mother, who weighs nearly 20 stone and can barely walk due to her poor health, was not labelled top priority.
It is the second time she has fallen in recent weeks and on the last occasion Mrs Day, a widow, bruised her face and broke her right wrist.
Mr Day said: "I think it's disgusting – she could have fallen down and broken something again.
"The way she is, anything could have happened to her. It should have been treated as an emergency, I think."
The East of England Ambulance Service has a station in Sawyers Hall Lane, Brentwood, just over one mile away from Mrs Day's home.
Ambulance service spokesman Gary Sanderson said calls such as these were taken "very seriously".
He said: "We initially received a 999 call at 5.14pm to a woman who had lost her footing in a bathroom and experienced a pain in her arm. Due to the clinical triage of this call, it was deemed non-life threatening as the patient was conscious and breathing."
He added: "Whilst the ambulance crew were en route to this address, a welfare/comfort call was made to a carer at the address from our control room to check on the patient.
"The ambulance arrived at 7.31pm and the patient was not transported to hospital."
The ambulance service has a target of meeting Category A (life threatening) calls within eight minutes while Category B (non-life threatening) calls are split into four sections based on a clinical assessment.
The response time ranges from 20 minutes for the most important Category Bs to no ambulance at all, depending upon the details of the case.
For more information visit www.eastamb.nhs.uk/how-we-respond-to-999-calls.htm
