‘It was awful. I was in tremendous pain lying on the floor...

Beverley Elmer was about to head out of her Penhill home when she missed the last three steps and landed near her open front door.

Unable to get up and advised by 999 call handlers not to move, the 52-year-old asked her children to call her husband for help and lay on the laminate in great pain with the winter chill blowing on her as the minutes slowly ticked by.

After waiting an hour, they called 111 and received advice from a nurse who let her take painkillers and suggested that her loved ones move her away from the door and prop her up on cushions.

Beverley said: “It was awful, I was in tremendous pain. I felt bitterly cold and I wondered if I would ever walk again. It’s unacceptable that I was left like this for so long.

“The ambulance service called me back at 5pm and around 7pm telling me they had not forgotten about me but said no-one was available because there were a lot of emergencies they were dealing with first.

“I found it hard to believe that there were that many serious emergencies happening at exactly the same time over the entire afternoon.

“Another two hours passed so my friends and family gently helped me up onto the sofa because they were worried that I’d be waiting on the floor all night at this point.

“A community response volunteer came over to check my circulation and vitals, then called 999 because he wanted a two-man crew and ambulance to take me to hospital.

“I could hear the person on the other end of the phone saying there were still none available. The volunteer argued that he was obliged to stay with me until they could send an available crew and they eventually found one that was free.”

At 10.50pm, more than eight hours after her first call, a crew from Chippenham finally arrived to take Beverley to Great Western Hospital. She was rushed in for an X-ray after she mentioned how long it had been since she had broken her leg.

Beverley praised the efforts of the ambulance crew and hospital staff who helped her but criticised the management of the ambulance service that let her down in her time of need.

She added: “I don’t know what went wrong but this delay should not have happened, it was terrible. I don’t blame the people who work for the ambulance service, they work so hard under so much pressure.

“But I have issues with the people who control the system and let it get to this point. How has this happened? Where is the money being spent?”

A spokesman for the South West Ambulance Service said: “We are very sorry that we were unable to reach this patient sooner.

“We were called on Saturday December 21 at 1.37pm about an incident involving a fall at an address in Swindon.

“We would normally expect to respond to a call of this nature within two hours, but we did not arrive until 10.03pm which was almost 8.5 hours later.

"Our first responder arrived at 22.03. The ambulance crew arrived at 22.50, treated her at the scene, and took her to hospital.

“Every patient is important to us, and we regret that this patient did not receive the response we would want. While we always try to reach our patients in a timely manner, we must priority patients according to clinical need.

“Unfortunately at the time of this call we were dealing with various other patients in more serious and life-threatening conditions.

"These included patients who had breathing problems, patients with chest pains, and patients with serious head injuries.

“Demand on the ambulance service has been very high, and we have a finite number of resources.

"We dealt with an average of 2,850 incidents a day during December 2019, which was seven per cent higher than the previous year.

“We continue to work incredibly hard to deliver a top quality response to all patients, and are always striving to improve our service.

“The patient and her family are welcome to contact our patient experience team who deal with comments, concerns and complaints.”