Ambulance response times ‘will cost lives’, survey of paramedics says
The Sunday Telegraph has documented hundreds of ambulances ramped for hours on end at multiple metropolitan hospitals awaiting admission. SEE THE QUEUES.
NSW
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Nine out of 10 NSW paramedics believe the current crisis in the NSW Ambulance network is leading to patient deaths.
A survey of hundreds of paramedics conducted by the Australian Paramedics Association (APA) also found 80 per cent believed they have attended a patient who had suffered worse outcomes due to extended response times in the past month.
APA secretary Gary Wilson said the state’s ambulance network now hit “status three”, its highest emergency response level, regularly as paramedics attempted to respond to increasing demands on the overstretched network.
“We have the worst response time in history, worse than any other state, and delays in response times leads to deaths,” Mr Wilson said.
“If you look at defibrillation, for every minute we delay defibrillating someone who needs it, their survival rate drops by 10 per cent. So a three minute increase in response times, three minutes is a 30 per cent drop in a patient’s survival rate.”
Over the past two weeks, The Sunday Telegraph has documented hundreds of ambulances ramped for hours on end at multiple metropolitan hospitals awaiting admission.
Ramping due to bed block prevents paramedics from responding to calls as they tend to patients outside emergency departments.
On Thursday there were zero ambulances available in the Illawarra, Central Coast or Newcastle, and only eight free in Sydney.
Industrial action by APA paramedics this weekend will include not taking billing details from patients to protest the crisis.
“We see it day after day, we have photos of hospitals stuck in bed block for hours on end,” Mr Wilson said.
One in three paramedics reported they had spent between four and six hours ramped outside hospitals facing bed block, and 55 per cent reported they had been ramped for between two and four hours as the state’s hospitals struggle to cope with Covid cases, soaring influenza rates, furloughed staff and overwhelmed emergency departments.
The survey also revealed 67 per cent of paramedics had done forced end-of-shift overtime in the past month.
33 per cent reported overtime 0-60 minutes, meaning 100 per cent of the repondants did overtime.
“Our system is under-resourced and these statistics reinforce … what (we) have told the government – we are 1500 paramedics behind Queensland and Victoria (per capita) and they are struggling with their workload.
“The system is buckling and the only thing that has kept it afloat is that paramedics are breaking themselves to look after the community,” Mr Wilson said.
Alarmingly, three out of four paramedics reported feeling too tired to drive home safely after work.
Figures released in March showed NSW Ambulance had the highest amount of responses in the last quarter since 2010, with 320,729 ambulance responses and almost 9000 priority cases. Patients with life-threatening conditions were up 32.9 per cent compared to the same period in 2019.
The Bureau of Health Information Quarterly report from March showed the service had hit a five-year low in response times.
A spokeswoman for NSW Ambulance said high numbers of Covid cases had impacted NSW Ambulance in a number of ways, including an increase in transport needs for cases and staff furloughed due to contracting the virus.
“The Omicron-related Covid-19 and recent influenza demand is on top of the normal paramedic workload in the community, which has now largely returned to pre-pandemic life, with an increase in car accidents, assaults, falls and other activity related callouts,” she said.
“Already this year more than 300 new paramedics have been deployed across the state.”
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