A 98-year-old woman was forced to wait for an agonising 16 hours before an ambulance came to help her after a fall.
Margaret Rothery fell and bumped her head on the way to the bathroom in Fairmilehead, Edinburgh on August 14.
Her daughter Ruth Rothery, 72, called 999 at 2.30pm and asked for an ambulance - but it was 7am the following day when one finally arrived.
At about 5pm on the day the ambulance was called Margaret fell and was unable to get back up - meaning she spent nearly 14 hours on the floor.
Ruth Rothery said: "My mother was becoming increasingly unwell. The ambulance team called me every two hours from then on to apologise for delays.
"They even recommended I call the fall service because they thought it would get there more quickly."
The mother and daughter waited 16 and a half hours for the ambulance to arrive at 7am on Sunday morning.
The fall service arrived shortly after this at 7.10am.
Ms Rothery added: "It was horrifying for my mother to have to wait. It was awful to see."
During the long wait, Ms Rothery's mother had to make several painful trips to the toilet, and, at 5.10pm on Saturday, she fell and was unable to stand back up.
Ms Rothery attempted to help her mother from the floor, but was unable to lift her.
She said: "She was not able to get to the bathroom after that.
"I will leave the rest up to your imagination but it was a very distressing situation for my mother to be in."
When an ambulance arrived on Sunday morning crew members were able to help Ms Rothery's mother off the floor and into the ambulance.
By then she has spent nearly 14-hours on the floor.
"The crew looked absolutely exhausted when they arrived.
"They apologised for our wait but said there was nothing they could do about it.
"They seemed as frustrated as I was."
Margaret Rothery is now at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh being treated and it is not yet known when she will be well enough to leave.
A spokesperson from the Scottish Ambulance Service said: "We would like to apologise for the delay in responding to Mrs Rothery and her daughter.
"While we are limited in what we can say due to patient confidentiality, at the time of the call, we were experiencing a significant reduction in resources across Edinburgh, combined with high demand.
"During this time, our clinical advisers contacted the patient several times while waiting for a resource to become available.
"We will be reviewing this case thoroughly and will contact the patient privately to apologise."
Statistics published last week show that 17,697 patients waited more than two hours for an ambulance in 2020/21.
Findings also revealed only 70.9 per cent of the most urgent 999 calls waited fewer than 10 minutes for an ambulance - down from 80.8 per cent in 2018/19.
A total of 125 patients waited more than 30 minutes and six patients waited more than an hour for an ambulance, despite their calls being triaged as purple, the most serious and urgent response category.
A Scottish Ambulance Service spokesperson said: "As with the whole of the NHS across Scotland, we are currently experiencing extreme pressure on our services as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Restrictions easing, staff isolating and lengthy hospital patient handovers have unfortunately resulted in an increase in delays to ambulances reaching patients.
"Our staff are working incredibly hard during this challenging time to attend to patients as quickly as possible.
"As part of our Demand and Capacity programme to increase our resilience, we're introducing additional staff, ambulances and the latest equipment across the country as we develop and grow our workforce at pace to respond to the demands made for our services."
