A terminally-ill grandmother who waited two hours for an ambulance has called for the Health Secretary to step down.
Nicola Sturgeon issued an apology on Thursday to brain cancer patient Margaret Goodman for the ambulance no-show.
Mrs Goodman, a former teacher who was a union area secretary in Fife, suffered “excruciating pain” during a wait that only ended when her husband drove her to hospital, where she endured further treatment delays.
The Clackmannanshire grandmother was one of 16,865 people in Scotland last year waiting at least an hour for an emergency ambulance, according to figures compiled by Scottish Labour.
Mrs Goodman, a mother-of-three, said her long wait for help on April 7 was “horrendous”, adding she cannot believe that thousands of others have had similar experiences.
She called 999 three times after district nurses said she must be admitted to hospital following a collapse.
“To find out that there’s actually 16,000 ambulances (which take longer than an hour to arrive), it goes to the basics of where you expect to be when you’re ill,” Mrs Goodman said.
“I would expect that if I need an ambulance an ambulance would come. And to find that out was quite shocking. I don’t know what to say about that. It’s the scale.”
Ms Robison is already under huge pressure amid the cash crisis at NHS Tayside and GP shortages, including the shutdown of out-of-hours services in Fife.
Asked if the health secretary should resign over ambulance performance, she said: “I think she should.
“It’s the one at the top – it’s always the one at the top. Who else is responsible?”
Richard Leonard raised Mrs Goodman’s case during First Minister’s Questions on Thursday.
Video: Exchange starts at 10:55min
The Scottish Labour leader told the FM: “How much more failure must people endure, before you finally realise that we need a change in our NHS, starting with a change of your health secretary?”
Ms Sturgeon said she did not accept Mr Leonard’s characterisation of the health service, saying that while staff were working under pressure record amounts of money were being invested and record numbers of staff employed.
She added that Mrs Goodman’s case as outline by by Richard Leonard are “unacceptable”.
“We expect the highest standards of care for patients across the country and on occasions where that doesn’t happen it’s very important that lessons are learned and applied for the future,” the First Minister said.
“If (Mrs Goodman) received care that was not of the standard she expected, and from what Richard Leonard has outlined today it certainly appears that that is the case, then of course she deserves and apology and I offer that to her.”
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Ambulance Service said they received a call that was not immediately life threatening and then were told that the ambulance was no longer required.
“However, Mrs Goodman waited longer than we would have liked and we would like to apologise,” she said.
“We are happy to meet with her to discuss this further and we are investigating the circumstances.
She added: “The priority of our hard working staff continues to be on saving lives and since 2013, survival rates on arrival at hospital for cardiac arrest patients we have treated and defibrillated have almost doubled.”
