Betty Thwaites in hospital just days after her traumatic fall. 72667 Picture: JOE MASTROIANNI
By XAVIER SMERDON
WHEN 80-year-old Betty Thwaites tripped and broke her hip late last month she never expected she would have to wait almost an hour for an ambulance.
On 22 October Ms Thwaites took a tumble on a metal strip protruding from between the tiles at the Wyndham Village Shopping Centre, leaving her lying in agony as she waited to be taken to the hospital.
“It was rather traumatic,” Ms Thwaites told Star.
“It seemed like a long time and someone told me it was around 55 minutes before the ambulance came.”
Ms Thwaites said she felt frightened and embarrassed as she lay in the middle of the busy shopping centre.
“It’s bad enough when it happens in people’s homes and you’ve got certain comforts around you,” she said.
Luckily strangers stopped and kept her calm, holding her hands and even buying a cushion to place under her head.
Ambulance Victoria Regional Manager, Simon Thomson, said Ms Thwaites’ waiting time was more like 45 minutes.
“The patient condition was described as stable and as such the ambulance was not sent lights and sirens. In this case, it also resulted in an ambulance on the case been sent to another higher priority case and the next closest ambulance was coming from further away,” Mr Thomson said.
“That said, we clearly don’t like making people wait that long but we do the best we can with the resources we have.”
But Ms Thwaites said she could not understand why she had to wait so long.
“The hospital (Werribee Mercy) is just up the road and they should have had an ambulance there,” she said.
The resilient senior citizen was taken to Footscray Hospital as Werribee Mercy could not take any more patients at the time.
