Mum turned away with crushed leg

Samantha Catherall, who lives just five minutes from Dewsbury and District Hospital, now plans to complain to the Mid-Yorkshire NHS Trust, which runs the hospitals, about its ‘utterly stupid’ system.

Samantha, 43, was checking her tyre pressures at Morrisons petrol station in Heckmondwike when a van crashed into her, crushing her between it and her own car.

An ambulance rushed to the scene, and Samantha said she watched as paramedics pulled out a list of hospitals which would or wouldn’t accept her.

Because her injuries included damage to her knee she was told Dewsbury might accept her, but when specialists were told about her condition they refused, despite her only living in nearby Laburnum Road in Heckmondwike.

So instead she was rushed to Pinderfields in Wakefield, where she was sixth in a long queue of people also brought in by ambulance.

After a long wait, Samantha was admitted into a cubicle and then was taken for an x-ray which showed extremely bad soft tissue damage.

She arrived home at 9.30pm that evening, after the accident happened at 5pm on Monday, May 23.

“The staff were really wonderful at Pinderfields, but they didn’t do anything that couldn’t have been done at Dewsbury - my local hospital,” she said.

“The funny thing is, if I’d managed to get myself to the Dewsbury hospital they would have had to have seen me there. It’s utterly stupid.

“I can understand how Pinderfields is struggling to cope if Dewsbury keeps passing on its patients.”

Samantha is now receiving physiotherapy treatment at Dewsbury and District Hospital.

The Mid-Yorkshire NHS Trust was unable to comment.