Swinney apologises to footballer with broken leg over ambulance wait | UK News

First Minister John Swinney has apologised to a young footballer who had to wait five hours for an ambulance after breaking her leg.

Brooke Paterson, 19, was injured while playing for Linlithgow Rose away at Cumbernauld United in North Lanarkshire on Sunday.

The central midfielder from Bo’ness, near Falkirk, has since undergone surgery in Forth Valley Hospital.

Speaking in parliament, Swinney apologised to Ms Paterson and expressed his “regret” at the situation.

The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) has also apologised for any distress caused by the delay in getting to the match, which it said was due to high demand and hospital turnaround times.

After the case was raised by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar at First Minister’s Questions, Swinney said that it appeared the ambulance call had been misclassified, meaning it did not have “the priority it should have had”.

“That is not acceptable,” he said.

“That is an error that has been made and we have to look into whether that is the case and whether there are other steps that need to be taken to remedy that.”

Sarwar accused Swinney of having “broken the system” and said families across the country were suffering as a result of waits for accident and emergency treatment.

Ms Paterson said she ran to get the ball at the same time as a United player during the Lowland League match.

“She went for a slide tackle and I got the bad end of it,” she told Scotland’s Drivetime programme.

“It just snapped straight away. I heard the snap and knew something bad happened.

“I just remember being in total agony and screaming and crying. I couldn’t focus – people were trying to talk to me and I couldn’t hear anybody. I was in a lot of pain.”

Teammates and onlookers at Guy’s Meadow Stadium rushed to her aid and several phoned for an ambulance after realising the seriousness of her injury.

“The ambulance said that it wasn’t a 999 emergency and I had to wait,” she said.

“The hours kept adding on and adding on, and I was getting more and more upset and frustrated. I was cold as well because I was lying on the ground.”

People covered her in jackets to keep her warm and comfortable as it got dark.

“I was more annoyed at the fact that they let me lie there on the wet grass, completely freezing with a bad injury,” she added.

“They took their time to come and get me. I just couldn’t believe they could do that to anyone.”

When asked if the apology from the SAS was enough, she said: “I don’t know.

“I don’t know that they won’t do that to someone else and it’s obviously happened before. An apology isn’t enough to fix these problems.”

It is not known when Brooke will leave the hospital, as she is still struggling with the pain as well as putting weight on the injured leg.

“I’m just really, really sore and tired all the time,” she said.

The footballer said she had suffered bad injuries before, adding: “I know I can come back from something like this, but I know it’s going to take a while.

“I just need to remember why I play football in the first place and that will keep me going. It’ll get hard at points but I can’t give up. I’ve came to far to give up on football now.

“When I’m playing football, all my worries go out the door. I don’t have any problems when I’m playing football. It’s always brought me joy no matter what.”

A SAS spokesperson said: “We would like to sincerely apologise to Ms Paterson for the delay in the ambulance response and for any distress caused.

“We can confirm that we received a number of calls on 21 September 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.

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