Dire ambulance wait times in Inverness

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Transcript

00:00My longest wait time outside the hospital, outside A&E and general assessment, is seven and a half hours.

00:10The seven and a half hours outside A&E was with a more serious patient,

00:18but unfortunately they just didn't have the space to take us in.

00:22And I think it's seen that an ambulance is a place of safety for a patient,

00:30whereas if that patient had maybe self-presented they would have been seen a lot quicker.

00:36But it's just unfortunate, it's absolutely not the hospital's fault.

00:43There's just too many people needing us and too many people needing care.

00:49So the seven and a half hours was really, really hard and it was during a night shift as well,

00:53so it's really hard on the patient because an ambulance is not made for comfort.

00:58An ambulance is made very much for scoop and go,

01:01and it's not made for sitting outside the hospital for hours on end.

01:05So the patient gets very uncomfortable, very agitated,

01:08and there's nothing we can do to help except apologise and wait.