Paramedics having to make ‘gut-wrenching’ and ‘distressing’ decisions over which patients will receive an ambulance
A senior paramedic has revealed how the process of deciding which life-threatening cases will receive ambulance help are pushing them to the edge.
SA News
Don't miss out on the headlines from SA News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- Triple-0 overhaul to deal with hospital ramping
- How to get the most of your Advertiser digital subscription
A stressed and overworked senior paramedic says trying to co-ordinate the ambulance service’s limited resources is so stressful he doesn’t want to work in the Emergency Operations Centre.
Extended care paramedic Steve Garrett gave emotional testimony before the Employment Tribunal, describing the lack of resources as both “distressing” and “gut wrenching”.
Mr Garrett works in the operations centre providing advice to other paramedics and trying to figure out where to send their limited ambulance crews.
“It is distressing to not be able to provide patients with the care that we should be able to offer,” he told the tribunal.
“It is distressing to talk to people on the phone when I agree that we should have got an ambulance to them, but have not been able to.
“We walk into an environment at the Emergency Operations Centre which is sometimes not up to SAAS or community standards.
“It is disappointing that sometimes I can’t send an extended care paramedic to change a dementia patient’s catheter at home. Instead they have to be taken to hospital, maybe sedated, and then end up at the back of the ramping cue.
“This exposes them to pressure sores and other infections.”
Extended care paramedics operate both in the community and at the operations centre.
A part of their job is to make “out of criteria call-backs”, a service which apologises to patients waiting for long periods and tries to sort out a non-ambulance treatment plan.
“Current staffing levels are not sufficient to meet demand,” Mr Garrett said.
“We should not be in a situation where staff are doing out of criteria call-backs on a daily basis.”
Mr Garrett also said he had been the only paramedic responding to an incident last week and had known that help was going to be delayed.
“It was gut wrenching sitting there with a patient who required transport, knowing there could only be limited intervention until the ambulance arrived,” he said.
The Ambulance Employees Association has taken the ambulance service to the Employment Tribunal over staffing, breaks and ramping issues which it says are pushing their members to the breaking point.
The ambulance service has rolled out a series of plans to deal with the increasing number of call-outs.
Last week the service announced the introduction of the clinical phone assessment service which will use 14 new paramedics to run a secondary triage service.
The paramedics will assess cases and redirect some patients to other clinical services, such as general practitioners.
However, Mr Garrett said that some forms of secondary triage had been running within the control centre for several years.
“We already direct large numbers of jobs to alternative pathways,” he said.
“I don’t think there are many patients left.”