Darwin dancer with dislocated knee left waiting for ambulance for six hours

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Darwin woman Monique Dries was left waiting for an ambulance for more than six hours after dislocating her knee during a dance competition on Saturday. The 20-year-old's mother has labelled the NT's emergency services system as "broken" and is calling for more investment into the ambulance service. A St John Ambulance NT spokesperson said the service's four emergency ambulances covering the Darwin region were responding to multiple-life-threatening emergencies during the same time period.

Transcript

00:00For 20-year-old Monique Dries, the dance floor was always her happy place.

00:07Now it triggers memories of pain after she dislocated her knee in a competition and laid

00:13for hours waiting for an ambulance.

00:15It wasn't until I started screaming in pain, they realised that it's not a cramp,

00:21it's something more.

00:22I didn't know what she had done.

00:26The only thing we worked out was you could see that her kneecap was on the floor.

00:31Her mother called an ambulance at around quarter past eight on Saturday night.

00:35She was told Monique wasn't able to have food, water or pain medication.

00:40I was laying on that stage floor for like four hours, I was cold.

00:44Her mother decided to try and take her to the hospital on a luggage trolley, but they couldn't

00:48get her into the car and waited another two hours for an ambulance.

00:53Our whole system is broken, I think we need to invest more in our ambulances and our emergency

01:02services because they are so underfunded, understaffed, overworked.

01:07St John Ambulance agrees, saying four ambulances covering the Darwin region Saturday night were

01:13under the pump.

01:15Unfortunately, our resources cannot meet this ongoing level of demand.

01:19Insufficient ambulance resourcing amplifies fatigue, stress and burnout in our staff who

01:24are already doing incredibly challenging roles.

01:27St John says there's currently talks underway with NT Health about resourcing.

01:32But for now, Territorians are stuck in a state of emergency.

01:37Do you want to see?

01:38Are you ready to take your bill?

01:39Do you want to see?

01:40It's really great.

01:41Do you want to see?

01:42Do you want to see?

01:43Let's see.

01:44Do you want to see?

01:46There's a few hours.

01:47I'm going to stop.

01:48I'm going to stop.

01:49You can go see for a bit.

01:50I'll see you in the beginning of my brain.

01:52You can't see what it's going on now.

01:53I'm going to see you in the back of your brain.

01:56Put it in the back of my brain.

01:57And then you can see I'm going to see you in the back of your brain.

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