A Dumbarton mum has spoken of her agonising five hour wait for help after her six-year-old daughter stopped breathing.
The shock incident came as new figures showed ambulance turnaround times at West Dunbartonshire’s nearest A&E were the highest in Scotland.
Dumbarton’s MSP Jackie Baillie has warned that “lives are on the line”.
Figures revealed that Paisley’s struggling Royal Alexandra Hospital, the nearest local A&E unit, had the highest turnaround time for ambulances in the country.
The data covers the period from October 1 last year until January 31 this year.
It revealed it took longer to complete the handover of patients to A&E staff there than anywhere else in Scotland.
And it highlights how one crew waited 10 hours and 43 minutes to be freed up from the hospital.
The impact of those turnaround times is being felt by residents, including one Dumbarton mum who told the Lennox of her experience.
The local, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “My daughter ran through to the bedroom to try and get me and whacked her hip.
“By the time she got to my room she was crying. I went to scoop her up and she went limp.
“I was telling her to sit up, but then I noticed that her eyes had rolled to the back of her head.
“She had gone rigid, her face puffed up and she had gone blue. I tried to shake her to get her to breathe.
“She came round and I called for an ambulance. On the phone they asked if she was breathing. I said that she was, but was lying in the bed, chalk white.
“They said they’d get an ambulance out to assess her, but it didn’t turn up for five hours.We called at 3.50pm in the afternoon. The ambulance turned up just before 9pm.
“The wait was horrible.
“I was sitting up with my daughter waiting that whole time. We were both exhausted.
“By the time the ambulance crew came they assessed her in the house. They said they’d assess her in the hospital, but I’d already done that at home.
“I didn’t want to pull her out at 10pm to sit in a hospital where I was told she’d have a six hour wait to be seen. The ambulance staff were lovely. If she wasn’t breathing then it would’ve been a different story. But because she came round we had to wait. When she wasn’t breathing and was blue then I really didn’t know what to do.”
After a referral to a seizure clinic it was determined that the girl, who is now doing well, had suffered a seizure brought on by the shock of pain that caused the body to effectively shut down and restart.
A Scottish Ambulance Service spokesman said: "This call did not come through the public 999 emergency system – it came to us via NHS24 at 1552 hours and based on the information provided, was appropriately triaged as a low acuity call.
"A clinical advisor assessed the call to ensure the patient’s condition had not changed. All our calls are triaged to ensure the most seriously ill patients are given the highest priority and the first ambulance dispatched to the patient was diverted to a higher priority call.
"A second ambulance was sent soon after and the family declined advice for the patient to be taken to hospital.
"As with the whole of the NHS across Scotland, we were experiencing extreme pressure on our services as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic late last year and we would like to apologise for the delay in responding to the patient.”
Scottish Labour meanwhile slammed the delays as “lengthy, dangerous and unacceptable”.
MSP Baillie said action is needed urgently, telling the Lennox: “These maximum turnaround times are incredibly worrying and show the immense strain that our ambulance service is under.
“For people in West Dunbartonshire, Helensburgh and Lomond they already face lengthy journeys to the region’s nearest A&E at Paisley. It is extremely worrying that services are not properly resourced and turnaround times are spiralling out of control.
“Turnaround times of this length are both dangerous and unacceptable.”
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said that pressures brought about by the pandemic had created unprecedented challenges, but that they were working closely with the Scottish Ambulance Service and health boards to reduce turnaround times.
She said: “Steps are being taken to receive patients into emergency departments as quickly as possible.
“The Health Secretary has set out further investment of £20million to introduce new ambulances and almost 300 additional staff.
“Despite the challenges, including serving some of the most rural areas in the UK, in 2020/21 our ambulance crews responded to over 70 percent of their highest priority calls in under 10 minutes and over 99 per cent in under 30 minutes.
“Our Ambulance Service continues to focus on improved outcomes for patients.”
