South Australia's health minister says other cases were rightly prioritised over a mother and son who were stabbed and a skateboarder who broke his leg early on Sunday morning.
Holly Myers and her son Huckleberry, 9, had to wait several hours before seeing a doctor at Adelaide's Women's and Children's Hospital yesterday after being stabbed after they chased a group of three men who had been rifling through Ms Myers' car in Unley.
According to SAPOL, she heard noises from outside her house and followed the trio, who then stabbed her and her son.
Ms Myers's partner, Tim Watson, told local newspaper The Advertiser, the time they took to be treated was "a disgrace".
"It is a real disgrace. It is not good enough," he said.
Health Minister Chris Picton said the boy was assessed by a triage nurse as a "priority 3" case and the same time there were other significant "priority 1" resuscitation cases happening.
"The hospital is saying that within three-and-a-half hours that a doctor assessed them, then went into X-rays, then plastic surgeons assessed it," he said.
"The family is disputing those timings, saying it waited longer than that.
"I guess it does highlight the triage nurses have an incredibly difficult job and they've also got to follow an assessment based on the clinical criteria that doesn't necessarily take into account the circumstances in which that injury might have occurred, i.e. a stabbing [is a] very high stress environment."
Long wait for skateboarder
On the same morning, Dan Monceaux was waiting for an ambulance at the Noarlunga Centre bus interchange in Adelaide's south, after breaking his leg while skateboarding.
The 41-year-old said a police officer who drove past helped him get onto the footpath, but then had to respond to an arson case and left the scene.
An ambulance arrived after 48 minutes following phone calls from Mr Monceaux asking where it was.
"When it finally arrived, I don't believe I was treated with the dignity that I deserved," Mr Monceaux told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"Perhaps it was to do with the hour of the morning, but I felt the service was actually quite rude and prejudicial."
He said what made it "insanely frustrating" was that Noarlunga Hospital was only a few hundred metres away.
He is now being treated at the Flinders Medical Centre.
"Certainly, the system isn't working," he said.
"I'm lucky I'm not in a life-threatening situation, but others have been and the consequences can be fatal.
"It's terrible, so we definitely need to address this quickly and with appropriate funding."
Mr Picton said the case was initially categorised as a priority 3 case, which SAAS aims to respond to within 30 minutes, before it was updated to a priority 2 case.
"The ambulance service was under significant demand at that point in time and we're still to put in significant more resources into our service," he said.
He said complaints about paramedics were rare.
"I have to say if the gentleman wants to make a specific complaint in the way that he was treated, obviously it would be investigated, but I have to say I am always amazingly impressed by the care and the compassion that our ambulance officers have right around our state and there's not too many times I have heard complaints in terms of the care they have provided," he said.
He also pointed out it was illegal to skateboard at night.
