THE prison service will assess its staff first aid training, after a officers were unable to recognise that a former inmate was having a heart attack.

Angus McAskill, 57,who was serving eight years at HMP Glenochil for assault and sexual offences, told officers he had been experiencing chest pains, fever and a sore throat.

A fatal accident inquiry at Stirling Sheriff Court heard that four officers attended including the night shift manager, whose duty it was under standing orders to ascertain the seriousness of the the prisoner's illness.

McAskill described his symptoms and was asked him if he had pain down his left arm, to which he replied no.

The night shift manager, whom the probe heard was first-aid but not medically-trained, thought McAskill had a cold, not a heart attack, and ordered two paracetamol.

In fact, McAskill, 57, was suffering from a myocardial infarct and he died of complications five weeks later.

In a 99-page determination Sheriff Simon Collins QC ruled that the first aid training of the prison officers who attended McAskill at 3.40am on 12 February, 2017, was defective, because it did not ensure they were aware that given his symptoms "there was a real possibility that he might be suffering from a heart attack".

Sheriff Collins said the training the officers had received also did not ensure they knew that an electrocardiogram test (ECG) would have "conclusively determined" if he was having a heart attack – and that medical attention should be sought urgently for such a test to be carried out.

Ruling that the officers' "defective training" had contributed to the death, Sheriff Collins said: "The Scottish Prison Service should review and revise standing orders for prison officers so as to secure that, where a prisoner complains of feeling unwell, with chest pains, sweating, and a sore throat, at a time when no medical or nursing staff able to carry out an electrocardiogram are on duty within the prison, the prison officer in charge should... direct that a call be made for an emergency ambulance to attend."

The inquiry, which lasted more than six days and concluded in June last year, heard that McAskill was seen by prison nurses later in the morning, and even after a reading from an ECG machine warned to "consider infarct of acute occurrence", only a so-called "one hour ambulance" was called, rather than a blue-light emergency ambulance which would have reached the jail in five minutes.

In the end, Mr McAskill did not reach the Forth Valley Royal Hospital, 12 miles away in Larbert, near Falkirk, until 3pm, by which time doctors concluded that part of his heart muscle was "beyond salvage".

Sheriff Collins said: "The circumstances of this case clearly establish that a prisoner who is reporting the symptoms which were reported by the deceased may well be having a heart attack, and that it is appropriate that this be determined as a matter of urgency – if only as a precaution – by ECG examination.

"The only way to achieve this at a time when no medical staff are on duty in the prison is to call an emergency ambulance.

"I am not suggesting that prison officers... must always call for an emergency ambulance in every case.

"But a recommendation framed in terms of the facts of the present case sets a benchmark for prison officers called on to make judgments in potentially life and death situations such as that which confronted [them].

"It will hopefully assist officers to know that, in similar cases of doubt, the expectation is that they will call an emergency ambulance, and that they need not fear criticism for doing so, even if only as a precaution, and even if on ECG examination it transpires that the prisoner's complaint is not cardiac in nature."

A Scottish Prison Service spokeswoman said: "We have received the determination and are considering the outcome. The SPS conduct a review of all deaths in custody to ensure that any lessons are learned promptly and any actions that require to be taken are taken. We would again wish to express our condolences to the family."