A DRUMCHAPEL midwife has hit out after she was trapped in a sweltering hot hospital lift with eight other people for more than an hour waiting to be rescued.

Elizabeth Saiz-Ruiz was trying to help her wheelchair-bound mother – an inpatient at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) for three weeks – to leave when the incident occurred on Monday.

The 43-year-old blasted the super hospital’s response and handling of the distressing situation. She said an emergency operator failed to deal with the situation properly – blaming a poor signal.

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The midwife, who works in an older section of the QEUH, said she had to take the situation into her own hands and call 999 for help as panic set in. But even when firefighters finally arrived, they had to wait longer for a lift engineer to show up.

The general manager arrived 15 minutes later and offered the victims water, but Ms Saiz-Ruiz accused the hospital boss of “playing the incident down”.

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She said: “There were nine of us in that lift and there was no air conditioning.

“We were all quite shell-shocked. She gave us water but didn’t seem overly-concerned. She was playing it down.”

Ms Saiz-Ruiz added: “We just felt trapped and completely abandoned. My mum is quite ill and takes a lot of medication. What if something had happened?

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“I’m absolutely furious – livid. I’m astounded this even happened. It’s the one thing the hospital needs to improve on – its emergency response to situations like this.”

An NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde spokeswoman said: “We would like to apologise to those people affected when a lift at the QEUH stopped between floors on Monday.

“The lift engineer arrived onsite within an hour, but it took us a short time to assist people from the lift and we appreciate this will have been a distressing time.

“Hospital facilities staff are looking into what caused the lift to stop between floors.”