The husband of an NHS boss took her to A&E on suspicion of having a stroke after hearing her “mourn the delays of the ambulance.”
In a series of tweets, Deborah Lee, chief executive of the Gloucestershire Hospitals Foundation Trust, said she had recovered, but warned the government that urgent action was needed.
Mrs. Lee had a “little turn” – distorted and unable to speak.
Explaining further, she wrote: “After hearing me complain about the delays of the ambulance, my husband put me in his car and took me to A&E.”
Once there, treatment was quick: “I was taken to a resuscitation and 35 minutes later I was in a CT scan, 30 minutes later a bolus of TPA (tissue plasminogen activator) was on board.”
TPA is a protein involved in the breakdown of blood clots.
Expressing her concern, Ms. Lee said, “I can’t get one thing out of my head: what if my husband wasn’t there and my daughter called for an ambulance and I was in the second category?”
In the south-west, where Ms Lee works, the average response time for a second-category call, which includes shocks, is one hour and 53 minutes – the longest in England, when the target is 18 minutes.
Figures show that the response time of the ambulance across the country has risen to its worst levels since the start of recordings in 2017.
Last month’s average response time for the most urgent ambulances in England was nine minutes and 35 seconds, up from eight minutes and 51 seconds in February.
Ms Lee, who has worked for the NHS for 30 years, said her “system works relentlessly” to reduce response time, but added that it was “of no great use”.
“There is no silver bullet and no answer,” she said. “But the government has the power to generate one.”
She called on politicians to review social welfare by improving staff training and pay, adding that they need to “build a sector in which people want to join, stay and feel proud to belong”.
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