An SA ambulance officer has spoken about feeling “ashamed” after stretched crews took 18 minutes to reach a patient who was having a heart attack.
During Monday’s Breaking @ 8 segment FIVEAA Breakfast’s David Penberthy read from a statement posted online by a local paramedic:
“Today was the worst day I’ve ever experienced in my time at the SA ambulance service. Roughly 75 per cent of the metro crews did their entire 12-hour shift without a single break.
“A person died today because we took 18 minutes to get an ambulance to them and even then it was only a single responder. Would they have died anyway if we’d been there in five minutes or even hit our own KPIs? Who knows.
“I’m sure on Monday we will see the health minister or CEO or whoever explain that there wasn’t any problem and all we had to do was divert from low acuity to high acuity patients or call in the mysterious additional crewing that can be brought in during surges of high workload.
“Quite frankly as someone who is paid to manage resources watching all of these blatant lies is insulting. I used to be proud to say I worked for the ambulance service – now I’m ashamed.”
Ambulance Employees Association boss Phil Palmer said the minister should “hang his head in shame”.
“That particular member is typical of all our members – sick to death of people spinning how everything is all right when we all know everything is not all right.
“You can never tell what the outcome might be, but you can tell that this poor patient was not given the best chance. Whatever chance that patient had of surviving was negated by 15 or 16 minute response time for the first resource and a longer response for the others.
“It’s an absolute disgrace. The minister should hang his head in shame…
“The shift length itself isn’t a problem if the ambulance service is properly resourced… what they need during those 12 hours shifts is a manageable workload and getting breaks on time.”
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