Fife paramedic diverted ambulance to go shopping for computer equipment An urgent call for an ambulance to take a depressed and suicidal woman to hospital was delayed when a paramedic took a diversion to buy equipment for her home computer, a misconduct hearing was told. Victoria Arnott was accused of acting unprofessionally after she admitted stopping en route to the woman's home to do personal shopping while on duty in Fife on July 4 2012. Appearing before the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) 's conduct and competence committee on Wednesday, the former Scottish Ambulance Service worker agreed she had visited a store without seeking authorisation but denied misusing an ambulance for personal purposes. A three-member panel heard that Ms Arnott, who joined the ambulance service in 1999, had been allocated a doctor's urgent call to attend the home of a depressed and suicidal woman and take her to hospital. Rowena Rix, representing the HCPC, said: "On that same date the control room supervisor reported to the duty shift manager that there had been a delay in Ms Arnott's crew responding to this call. She admitted she had stopped the ambulance en route to the urgent call in order to undertake some personal shopping. The paramedic had acted unprofessionally and had put her own interests before those of the patient, Ms Rix said. Witness Iain Morgan, who was the east ambulance control centre duty shift manager at the time, told the panel that investigations showed the ambulance had deviated from its route for around seven minutes. "I spoke to Victoria and she informed me she picked up something to do with her computer," he said. Ms Rix asked: "In your experience is it ever acceptable to stop en route to an urgent call?" "No, it's not," Mr Morgan said. Alice Stobart, counsel for Ms Arnott, suggested that there was a procedure for paramedics to stop en route and others had been authorised to do so in the past. However, this claim was disputed by Mr Morgan. The call was at the second lowest level of priority for the ambulance service with a response window of one to four hours, the panel was told. It had initially been received by the control room at 11.41am and was not allocated to Ms Arnott's crew until 3.35pm. Ms Stobart said given such a window, her client might expected to know from experience that there was unlikely to be clinical or medical attention necessary. In her testimony, Ms Arnott said she told colleagues she had stopped her ambulance to pick up equipment for her computer because she was too embarrassed to tell them about her health issues. She told the committee that she felt "pretty poorly" from the start of her 12-hour shift. She said that while en route from Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy she decided to stop at a retail park chemist for medication. "I was feeling symptomatic to a point where I was somewhat frustrated and distracted," she said, adding that she did not ask for permission to stop because she was embarrassed and "not thinking straight." Ms Arnott, who joined the ambulance service in 1999, said she was concerned about telling people about her health issues as "it is not the most discreet of services." The paramedic said she later felt "mortified and humiliated" about what she described as a "grave error." "I was finding it a bit difficult to understand why I let myself down so badly and in a way that I put patients at risk," she said. The hearing is expected to last two days. The panel will rule on whether misconduct has been proved and if so, whether Ms Arnott's fitness to practise is impaired.