Ambulance service ‘very sorry’ after seven-hour delay attending injured Sheffield footballer

Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust said during the last few weeks, urgent and emergency care system “has come under increasing pressure” and this affected the emergency call they received from the football team on May 27.

A parent of one of the players, Neil Asquith said they rang the ambulance at 7.31pm immediately after the incident but were told that they would get a paramedic to ring them back but it was not until 10pm when they heard back from the paramedics.

The paramedics finally came to the park and attend to the injured player at 2.25am and brought the player to the hospital, which he had to wait for another seven hours before he was treated.

In a statement, Yorkshire Ambulance Service apologised for the delay, saying: “We are very sorry to hear that the patient’s family has concerns about a delayed response to this incident and our Patient Relations Team would be able to look into the specific details around this and liaise directly with the family.

“During the last few weeks the urgent and emergency care system has come under increasing pressure. We can confirm that this emergency call was received during a particularly busy period on Thursday 27 May and we were doing our best to reach all patients who needed our assistance as quickly as possible.

“All calls are categorised according to the nature of the patient’s illness or injury and those in a life-threatening condition are always prioritised. For many patients our process often involves a call back from a clinician to assess their condition and check on any changes or deterioration.

“We wish this patient well in their recovery and would like to reassure members of the public that our priority is to provide a safe, responsive and high quality service to the people of Yorkshire.”

Neil however stressed that it was not the paramedics' fault and he believed that emergency services need to receive more funding so they could have more ambulances on standby.