A 92-year-old woman fell to the ground outside Ninewells Hospital in Dundee after a porter refused to leave the building to help transfer the patient from a car to a wheelchair.
The elderly woman’s daughter has criticised the lack of help available to her and said the porter told her he was not allowed to go outside the hospital.
He was ready and waiting to give assistance at the door after the woman had struggled to get her mum into a wheelchair alone and lost her grip on her.
A passer-by helped the daughter who wishes to protect her mother’s privacy and not be publicly identified after the old lady fell to the ground.
The 92-year-old was due to have a minor operation at Ninewells on Monday and her daughter picked her up from the Perthshire nursing home where she lives and drove her to the hospital.
“I left her sitting in the car at the drop-off area and went to reception to ask for help from a porter,” the daughter said.
“Mother can stand up but that’s about it. She can’t move, she can just shuffle her legs. Very recently she had a second hip operation after a fall. She falls quite a lot.”
She added that when the porter arrived he apologised and said he wasn’t allowed to go outside to help. So she took a hospital wheelchair and single-handedly tried to manoeuvre her mother out of the car and in to the chair.
“I was holding on to her but she slipped and ended up on the ground,” she said. “It was a gentle fall but she got a bruise on her elbow and was shaken.
“Somebody that was passing helped me get her off the ground and into the wheelchair. As soon as we got to the hospital entrance the porter was there waiting and said, ‘I will take her now.’
“I could have pushed her in the wheelchair from the entrance to the ward myself. It was getting her from the car into the wheelchair that was the bit I needed help with.”
Last night Ninewells site manager Brian Main said there was no policy banning porters from going outside the building.
“There would appear to be an issue we need to look at because it is not our policy not to help people,” Mr Main said. “Assistance can be provided.”
Photo used under a Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr userTheTruthAbout.