Player left to wait in agony

By Melissa Meehan
NAR NAR GOON football captain Chris Adams lay in excruciating pain for an hour waiting for an ambulance on Saturday after suffering a snapped leg.
After being told by tripe zero operators not to move him, onlookers watched on in horror as he lay on the wing.
His father Darryl said the newly named captain broke his leg 15 minutes into the first quarter in a practice match between Nar Nar Goon and a Melbourne team.
“It’s disturbing how long he had to wait for an ambulance,” Mr Adams said.
“From the nature of his injuries he was in obvious severe pain and couldn’t be moved, we couldn’t do anything for him until an ambulance came.”
He said it took one hour and two minutes before an ambulance finally arrived to find his son had broken both his tibia and fibula in a clean break six inches above his ankle.
“For us that was very disappointing and really quite disgusting,” he said.
“There were many people calling (triple-zero) because they were very very frustrated.”
He said when the ambulance crew arrived they did a great job.
“The whole situation is not their fault, we all know the situation,” he said.
“They took him straight to the Dandenong Hospital where he was operated on on Sunday morning.”
Mr Adams said the ambulance officers apologised up to six times for the amount of time his son had to wait.
Ambulance Victoria Group Manager Andy Roughton said he was sorry for the distress caused to the patient and his family but said a more life threatening case was the reason for the delay.
“We received a call at 2.46pm and it was 3.44pm before our crew arrived at the patient,” Mr Roughton said.
“We had an earlier ambulance assigned to the case and it had been responding for some time, however a chest pain case was called in and they were the closest the ambulance for that case.
“In terms of priority and biggest threat to life the chest pain case is the priority so that ambulance needed to be diverted and the next closest available ambulance was then sent to Nar Nar Goon.
He said the second ambulance was responding from its branch in Cranbourne.
“While we understand that a broken leg can be painful, it is not a life threatening condition and as such we did not respond with ambulance lights and sirens to this case,” he said.
All local crews in the area were rostered and fully staffed on Saturday, he said. However, the combination of the more life threatening cases in the area and the distance required to travel led to the prolonged response time.
A spokesman for the Nar Nar Goon Football Club said the club was disappointed that their player had to wait for so long and would be voicing their concerns to the relevant services.
It is believed Chris, or Herb as he is known by his team mates, will be out for the rest of the season.