A SCOTS police officer was forced to drive a casualty to hospital in the back seat of his car amid ongoing health crisis when no ambulance was allocated after an attempted suicide.
Without ambulances available to attend, police officers have been asked to step in and help paramedics who are under severe strain.
According to The Scottish Police Federation (SPF), there have been approximately 30 examples of police driving patients to hospital in the backs seats of their cars.
Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash
In one instance a police officer was forced to take a man to hospital when no ambulance was allocated after an attempted suicide.
Police have also come to the aid of a man facing a three hour wait for an ambulance, whilst bleeding from injuries to the inner ear and head suffered from an assault.
In another instance, no ambulance was available for an elderly person who had been bitten by a dog and was bleeding heavily, with the police again called in to help.
Paramedics are under severe strain, with ambulance shortages meaning patients may be left with no medical transport at all or face extensive waiting times.
However, the Scottish Ambulance Service has denied this is the case, with no expectation for police officers to transport patients.
Spokesperson for SPF, Gordon Forsyth, said: “Cops out there are taking people to hospital in the back of police cars simply because the ambulance is going to be hours, or there isn’t anybody suitable to leave the person with the stand down.
“I’ve got a list of 30-odd examples, various things where the cops have been sent to calls because an ambulance hasn’t been available, or having to wait for a significant period of time for an ambulance to get there.
“It all goes back to the question of where does the policing responsibility stop and start?”
Chief constable Iain Livingstone said that police officers would “never step away from those in crisis”, stating that policing is a “service of first and last resort”.
