Ambulance delay faced by footballer down to ‘classification error’, says Swinney

A five-hour wait for an ambulance endured by a footballer who broke her leg was due to an “error in classification”, the First Minister has said.

Brooke Paterson, 19, was injured in a tackle during a game between her Linlithgow Rose side and Cumbernauld United on Sunday.

Despite an ambulance being called, it took five hours for one to arrive, leaving Brooke lying in pain on the pitch, covered with jackets to keep her warm.

The Scottish Ambulance Service has since apologised, as has First Minister John Swinney.

Challenged on the situation during First Minister’s Questions on Thursday by Labour leader Anas Sarwar, Mr Swinney said: “I apologise to Brooke Paterson.

“I’ve read the story this morning about the issue, I regret very much the experience Brooke Paterson has had.

“I looked into this this morning, and there will have to be further scrutiny about this because I’ve had limited time to look at this this morning.

“It looks to me as if an error was made in the classification of this particular call, which has not had the priority that it should have had.

“That’s what it looks like based on the limited time this morning I have had to look at that.

“That’s not acceptable, that is an error that has been made and we need to look into whether that is the case or whether there are other steps that need to be taken to remedy that.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Ambulance Service said in a statement an investigation had been launched into the circumstances.

“We would like to sincerely apologise to Ms Paterson for the delay in the ambulance response and for any distress caused,” the statement said.

“We can confirm that we received a number of calls on September 21 to attend this incident but due to high demand and hospital turnaround times, which ranged between 90 minutes to three hours in the area, this significantly delayed our response and we unfortunately could not attend immediately.

“An investigation into Ms Paterson’s care will be carried out and any learnings implemented.

“When a time is appropriate, we would ask Ms Paterson or her family to contact our patient experience team directly so we can personally discuss our findings. We hope Ms Paterson is recovering well.”