A 95-YEAR-OLD woman waited four hours for an ambulance in Cirencester after a ‘serious fall’.

Nancy Blannin’s son, Paul, called the Standard just after 4pm on Tuesday to say he had been waiting since 3.20pm for an ambulance at Mulberry Court care home, after she fell and hit her head.

He said he’d called the emergency services three times before a paramedic arrived at 5.30pm. The first responder assessed Nancy, pictured, before calling an ambulance himself, which finally arrived at 7.15pm, taking her to Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

“My mum fell and hit her head quite badly on the door frame,” said Paul. “She was with two carers but in and out of consciousness. It was a serious fall and she was bleeding.

“She was begging for help because she was in so much pain. The carers held a pressure pad on the wound for two hours and it was still bleeding heavily.”

He added: “There are not enough ambulances and staff, that’s the problem.”

The ambulance eventually arrived from Malmesbury just short of four hours after the first call was made.

Yesterday morning Paul said his mother was in a stable condition.

He said: “She had a scan, revealing a couple of cracked ribs, small compression of her vertebrae in her middle back, bruising and a badly cut head needing stitches. She remains in hospital for a couple of days.”

Following the ordeal, Paul was full of praise for the care home staff and the first responder.

“Care staff at Mulberry Court remained with her for the whole time, refusing to leave until they knew she was safe, comforting her and behaving in a very caring and efficient manner,” he said.

An ambulance service spokesman said: “We would like to apologise for the delay in reaching the patient and are looking into the matter further.

"Our first resource arrived on scene at 5.30pm and the attending paramedic administered treatment until an ambulance arrived to convey the patient to Great Western Hospital at 7.12pm.

"We have a finite number of resources to respond and there was excess demand in the area at the time, meaning that no ambulance was immediately available to attend.

"We are dealing with an additional 470 incidents each day than we were five years ago and we need to prioritise calls which are life threatening, where patients are unconscious and not breathing.

"In this case the patient was conscious and breathing throughout the incident, but the time taken to reach her is longer than we would have liked.”

The spokesman added: “If the patient’s son would like to discuss this incident we would urge him to get in touch with our patient experience team.”