Ambulance Tasmania paramedics to take industrial action over ramping, says HACSU

Fed-up paramedics say they will take industrial action over the state’s ramping crisis from Monday morning. Here’s the details.

Paramedics Jess Warren, Rhiannon Menegon, and Natalie Koning with HACSU industrial manager Lucas Digney outside the Launceston General Hospital, as paramedics around the state prepare to take industrial action over the ramping crisis. Picture: Stephanie Dalton

The state’s most powerful union has warned that the Tasmanian government faces industrial action as frustration mounts over the state’s ramping crisis.

Paramedics and patient transport officers across Tasmania will join together from 7am Monday and refuse to provide treatment outside their specific scope of practice.

HACSU industrial manager Lucas Digney said paramedics were fed up at the inability of the government and the department to implement their much-lauded cap on ambulance ramping, resulting in a reliance on paramedics working in hospital emergency departments and chronic amounts of overtime from paramedics and communications officers.

“Despite promises from the government of added staffing, many positions are either not permanently funded or remain vacant, leading to an over reliance on overtime as the primary solution,” Mr Digney said.

“It’s making our members sick. They’re dealing with the worst response times, and there is absolutely no plan to fix it.

“We demand nothing short of immediate action to enable the nation’s busiest ambulance workers to do their jobs without being stuck in the emergency department or wondering how to dispatch an ambulance when none are available, all while dealing with distressed calls for assistance.”

Mr Digney spoke of the physical and emotional toll on paramedics and ambulance communications workers, stressing that the burden of an underfunded and chaotic health system should not impede their ability to respond to medical emergencies in the community.

Ambulances line up at the Royal Hobart Hospital emergency department entrance. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

“For too long, our members have had to hear calls for assistance from the community and be able to do nothing about it. So they’re taking matters into their own hands as of Monday morning,” he said.

“Starting at 7am, members will simply be transporting patients to hospital and providing them with high levels of clinical care until such time as patients can be handed over to the Tasmanian Health Service.”

Jess Warren, who has worked as a paramedic for 16 years, said the psychological stress of her work was ‘unbelievable’.

“I’ve had a call to a 12-year-old having a cardiac arrest, and it took me 12 minutes to be able to leave the hospital and respond to that job, and the stress from knowing the adverse outcomes of being late is horrific,” Ms Warren said.

Another paramedic, who wished to remain anonymous, said just before Christmas he attended a two-year-old boy who was having a severe asthma attack.

Fortunately, as there was no ramping on this particular day, the paramedics were able to resuscitate the boy.

The intensive care paramedic said, as a father, it was distressing to know the life of a child depended on the hospital’s ramping status.

“I don’t know how I would have been able to face the parents if their child had died as a result of us being unable to attend fast enough,” he said.

“Something needs to be done; we just want to be able to do our job.”