8:30am Saturday 11th July 2009
By Clare Kennedy
A TEENAGE cricketer spent nearly two hours waiting in agony on the pitch for an ambulance crew after dislocating his knee.
Chris James was batting for Colden Common when he suffered the injury after twisting his knee.
A 999 call was made for an ambulance to attend the VT Sports Ground in Portsmouth Road, Woolston, Southampton, at 6.15pm.
Another emergency call was made half an hour later when no one had turned up.
An ambulance crew finally arrived at 8pm – one hour and 45 minutes after the original 999 call was made.
Priority During that time the 17-year-old’s team-mates helped to put ice on his knee to ease the pain as he lay as still as he could on the pitch and the match against VT was abandoned.
He said: “I was pretty fed up. I understand there are calls that have a higher priority but it still seemed like a long time to wait.”
The Eastleigh College student of Brue Close, Chandler’s Ford, was taken to Southampton General Hospital where his right leg was put into plaster.
His father Stuart said: “I understand that some calls are more urgent than others.
“But I think that it is totally unacceptable as a taxpayer for the NHS to leave a teenager lying in agony for this amount of time.”
The father-of three said that he wanted to thank the crew which eventually arrived but said he felt let down by a system that left his son waiting for so long.
He said: “The ambulance crew were a little surprised at the length of time he had been there and advised that given the time without treatment that they were unlikely to be able to pop his knee back in place and therefore took him to A&E.”
A South Central Ambulance spokesman said: “The call was categorised as a category C emergency – non-serious and non-life- threatening – which means we have a locally recognised target of one hour to be at the patient’s side.
“It is regrettable that we were not able to reach the patient as quickly as we would like on this occasion due to external pressures and other higher priority emergencies and we apologise for the delay.”
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