NICOLA Sturgeon today apologised “unreservedly” for long ambulance waiting times, announcing that the military could be brought in to help with the backlog.
The First Minister was questioned about the death of Gerald Brown, 65, from Glasgow, who died after waiting for 40 hours for an ambulance, as the Herald exclusively revealed on Thursday.
She offered her condolences to the family of Mr Brown, but said the issues in the service would continue “for a period” as pressure caused by the pandemic continues and the winter months draw closer.
Ms Sturgeon said the waiting times for some patients were “not acceptable”.
READ MORE: Anger as Glasgow father-of-three dies after 40-hour wait for ambulance
She added: “I apologise unreservedly to anyone that has suffered or is suffering unacceptably long waits.
“A range of actions have already been taken to address these challenges, for example additional funding to support new recruitment.
“A number of additional actions are currently under active consideration and I’m happy to summarise these in further exchanges, but I can confirm now that this includes consideration of seeking targeted military assistance to help deal with short-term pressure points.
“Such military assistance is already being provided to ambulance services in England and of course we have had military assistance for other aspects of the pandemic over the past 18 months.”
Following on from the announcement, we want to know your experiences.
Have you visited A&E recently? Have you used the Scottish Ambulance Service? Let us know your experiences via the sumbission form below.
Have you had any experience of long ambulance or A+E waiting times?
Nicola Sturgeon today confirmed talks are underway to deploy the Army to support Scotland's struggling ambulance service has confirmed. What has your experience of ambulance or A&E waiting times been like? Let us know here.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel