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Dave Masters woke up with chronic pain down the side of his body but, as he was worried about catching Covid, he did not go directly to hospital. Instead, the 61-year-old man went to  Roxton Practice in Immingham, Lincolnshire, where he said he began “banging on the door and screaming” to be let in.

When a doctor eventually examined Mr Masters, he reccommended an ambulance be called but was told they would be waiting six hours for it to arrive.

That prompted one of the doctors and a nurse to drive the man to the hospital themselves, Grimsby Live reports.

Scans last week found Mr Masters had kidney stones, which he’s since had removed at Scunthorpe General Hospital.

“At first, I thought I may have a ruptured appendix or something, the pain was excruciating and unbelievable,” Mr Masters said.

“The stones themselves were 3mm, but they hurt so much.”

The patient, who spent two days in hospital, says he is extremely grateful to the GP and nurse who took him for further care themselves.

He added: “If they’d not acted as quick as they did, who knows what could have happened.”

“It was amazing of them to have done that and I can’t thank them enough for going beyond their call of duty.

“I offered to drive myself, but they told me that wasn’t going to happen as I was likely to cause an accident due to the amount of pain I was in.

“I’d woken up at 7am with such astronomical side pains like you wouldn’t believe.”

Sue Cousland, Divisional Director for Lincolnshire at East Midlands Ambulance Service said: “We are very sorry that we were unable to get to the patient sooner on this occasion and I recognise the distress that this will have caused them.

“Every 999 call is assessed based on the information provided by the caller and people experiencing a life-threatening emergency such as a cardiac arrest or breathing difficulties have to be seen first.

“We continue to experience a high demand on EMAS and the wider NHS system, and at the time of this patient’s call we were responding to a number of people out in the community whose life was reported to be at immediate risk.

“Colleagues and volunteers are working tirelessly to get to people who need our help in an emergency, and we are following our prepared action plans for responding to extremely high levels of demand.

“We have asked to speak to the patient because we are keen to understand their experience with us, to help us improve the service we provide.”

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