Northampton dad who lost three pints of blood through head wound waited six hours for ambulance

Dad-of-two Samuel Horne, aged 37, had been suffering with a stomach illness at home in Spencer when he became so weak one evening that he fell to the floor.

He came round to see his wife telling him he would be okay, that he suffered a head injury but she was calling an ambulance.

But her assurances proved to be ill-founded when paramedics failed to arrive until six hours later - at 4am.

Mr Horne said: “Looking back on it, I believe I could have died on my sofa.

“I’m a first aider but my wife had no experience of anything like that so for her to have to look after me with that kind of injury was distressing for her.

“The medics when they arrived were marvellous and said sorry but the system is letting them down.”

Mr Horne estimates he lost three pints of blood, which completely soaked the towels that he had to use to stem the flow.

Blanche Lentz, East Midlands Ambulance Service’s general manager for Northamptonshire, apologised to the couple.

She said: “Any delay is unacceptable and we are looking into what happened. I would like to meet with the family once we have completed the investigation to talk through our response.

“We continue to see an increase in demand on our service. Our commissioners are in the process of conducting an independent external review to understand the level of demand, the level of staff we need, along with the finances needed to be able to respond.

“We know that we need more staff to meet our local demand and are actively recruiting to our frontline team.”