90-minute wait to aid dying man

AMBuLANCE chiefs have launched an investigation after it took 90 minutes for crews to reach a man who lay dying in his garden.

The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) has been criticised for its delayed response in reaching John Thomson, who died of hypothermia after falling and injuring his head after he arrived home from a night out.

A neighbour found him at 1pm the next day and called 999.

But it took three calls for the control room to upgrade the call and by the time the crew arrived more than an hour later, 65-year-old Mr Thomson had died.

Mr Thomson’s uncle, Henry Thomson, described the agonising wait and said he had desperately tried to cover him up to keep him warm.

The 79-year-old disclosed that he only realised his nephew had died during the wait when paramedics covered his body with a sheet soon after reaching his home at Sauchen, near Kemnay, Aberdeenshire.

Mr Thomson, known as Jack, had attended a country music night at Thainstone Exchange, Inverurie, on Saturday, September 15, and returned home in a taxi. He was found injured in the garden of his home at 1pm the next day but was still breathing when the first emergency call was placed.

Henry Thomson, who runs the Thomson and Sons livestock transport firm, said: ‘We waited and we waited and this ambulance never came.’

It was only after a third call was made – an hour after the first – that a call centre worker in Glasgow upgraded the situation to ‘category one’.

At that point, an ambulance on its way to Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, was diverted to Sauchen.

Mr Thomson said: ‘The paramedics arrived about 30 minutes after that, but unfortunately Jack died before they even got to him.’

An SAS spokesman said: ‘We always seek to triage calls, prioritising those with the highest acuity symptoms. We will be carrying out a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident.

‘We are not aware that there were any issues for us pinpointing the patient’s location.’

unite union official Tommy Campbell said: ‘This is another example of the concerns paramedics have been raising for quite a few years. Staff in the North-East are under pressure, working long hours with limited resources.’

‘Jack died before they got to him’