AN AMBULANCEWOMAN has described how she was brutally attacked by a drunken thug she was treating. Mandy Taylor, 42, was knocked to the ground in a street in Gillingham.

Her bosses at Kent Ambulance Service NHS Trust say it is one of worst assaults on their staff since records began. Ms Taylor, 42, said: "We should not have to put up with this. You try to help someone and get treated like a punchbag."

Ms Taylor and a woman colleague were called to Cornwall Road to tend to a man who had fallen. The man, who was with two friends, had been drinking, was covered in blood and need head stitches and the crew took him inside the ambulance.

He insisted he wanted to get out and Ms Taylor opened the back doors for him. He lurched forward, she caught him to stop him falling out and he kneed her in the stomach.

The man refused the crew's pleas for treatment and they prepared to leave. Ms Taylor said: "As I walked back towards the driver's door I felt a huge whack on my head and the next thing I know I was on the floor and my glasses were smashed."

The three men left and she was treated in hospital for two left eye cuts, a black eye, a bruised and swollen forehead and an injured right knee from the fall.

Ms Taylor, an ambulance technician, said: "I have been in the job for 15 years and I have never been physically attacked before. It makes me so angry. I have been off work since it happened but I am coming back soon. One thug won't stop me."

Chris Howdon, the ambulance service's A&E manager for West Kent, said: "Our crews do an excellent job and work extremely hard and for people to assault them is absolutely disgraceful." Mr Howdon said figures show a rise in physical assaults on ambulance staff, with 23 in Kent from April 2000 to March 2001 and already 27 in the last 10 months.

A man is due to appear before Medway magistrates in connection with the attack.