Sharn McKellar spent about 2 hours waiting for an ambulance to arrive when he helped an injured lady at Days Park.

A man who nursed an injured woman for two hours before an ambulance arrived has laid a complaint against St John.

The patient, understood to be in her late 60s, was walking her dog in Hamilton's Days Park on Tuesday afternoon when she fell down a slope and hit a tree trunk head first at the bottom.

The impact is understood to have left her with a fractured ankle, a broken nose and damage to nerves in her neck.

CHRISTEL YARDLEY/FAIRFAX NZ 'I'm disappointed with the response time," Sharn McKellar says, "especially after being assured in the first two phone calls that an ambulance was on the way.'

The accident happened about 1.45pm and the woman was bleeding and dazed, said Sharn McKellar, who had been fishing nearby. He heard a thump and went to investigate.

"I'm disappointed with the response time of that ambulance, especially after being assured in the first two phone calls that an ambulance was on the way," he said.

More than 90 minutes elapsed before St John rang him back to check on her condition, to advise of the ambulance delay, and to ask for the woman's ethnicity.

"What's ethnicity got to do with life and death?" McKellar said.

A St John Ambulance spokeswoman, in a statement, said the call was correctly handled, but will meet with the patient to discuss the wait time. The spokesperson did not respond to queries about why St John wanted to know the woman's ethnicity.

Once the ambulance did arrive, the fire service had to be called to bring in a special stretcher.

"I should have just rung the fire engine to come and save her. What's up with that?" McKellar said.

"When I first got to her, she didn't know where she was ... blood pouring out of her head. I got a cloth, and everything, applied pressure to it - the bleeding stopped."

He laid a complaint with St John on Wednesday.

The first 111 call was correctly prioritised as neither life-threatening nor time critical, St John spokeswoman Sheri-Lyn Purdy said in a statement.

"In this case, our process is to send an ambulance when one becomes available," she said.

"It took two hours for an ambulance to reach the scene and we always regret when patients have to wait longer than is ideal."

McKellar, in relating the event, said he heard a thump, saw the woman's dog and then part of her dark blue jacket.

He approached, asked if he could help, and moved her into as comfortable a position as possible, given the tree roots. He couldn't move because he was supporting her on his shoulder, to keep her neck up. He eventually lost feeling in his arm.

During the first phone call - at 1.50pm - he was assured an ambulance was on the way. But when none arrived, he rang again at 2.38pm.

St John said there was still no ambulance available, so it was arranged for a paramedic to ring back for a clinical telephone assessment. That wouldn't happen for nearly another hour.

Meanwhile, other park users provided warm clothes and a towel and helped look after the woman's dog, while more went up to River Road to direct the ambulance when it arrived.

Bystanders got worried and made further 111 calls, so McKellar thinks there were about six in total.

St John, which has a base in Hukanui Road, about a 5-minute drive away, finally called back at 3.20pm to check on the woman's condition.

"Supposedly all the ambulances in Hamilton were on call somewhere," McKellar said.

"I just hung up the phone in disgust after that.

"I told them on that phone call, 'You're going to need a stretcher, there's no other way you can get her up the hill.' "

St John spokeswoman Purdy said the telephone assessments were part of a regular St John process and designed as a safeguard for waiting patients.

"Based on the paramedic's assessment and new information, the incident was upgraded in priority and an ambulance was dispatched shortly afterwards."

By then the woman's condition was worsening, McKellar said.

"She was going into shock, she was getting cold, her face was going pale, there were more complaints about pain," he said.

"Her speech had got slower, it got slurred and then the only response I could get from her was ... just pain sounds."

At 3.40pm, an ambulance arrived, only to ascertain that rescuers needed a special stretcher, so it took another 15 minutes for the fire service to arrive with one.

The fire service confirmed that a call logged at 4pm on Tuesday was to assist an ambulance with a patient who had fallen down an embankment, and a special kind of stretcher called a stokes basket was used.

The injured woman phoned McKellar the day after the accident to thank him for his help.

She was stable in a ward at Waikato Hospital on Friday afternoon but did not want to be interviewed.

Waiting for the ambulance

1.45pm: estimated accident time

1.50pm: first 111 call

2.38pm: second 111 call

3.20pm: call from St John asking about condition, told no spare ambulances available

3.40pm: ambulance arrives, calls fire service for special stretcher

4pm: estimated time fire engine arrives with stokes basket