By NOEL MURPHY
GEELONG paramedics are urging their managers to take up the cudgels for more resources, better pay and a new ambulance administration.
About 200 officers from Bellarine to Geelong and Anglesea faced daily problems getting to patients on time and no amount of petitioning the State Government had succeeded in improving matters, paramedic Tony Murrell told the Independent.
“People are suffering every day,” Mr Murrell said.
“I routinely walk into a job and the first words out of my mouth are ‘I’m sorry you’ve had to wait for an ambulance’. People are often waiting in pain for two hours.”
According to Mr Murrell, benchmark times for paramedics to respond to call-outs were regularly blowing out and patients were suffering as a result.
Mr Murrell cited several cases on Tuesday alone, highlighting delays faced by ambulances:
– An 11-year-old girl who fell from a horse at Swan Bay; requested at 11.26am, arrived 1.35pm.
– A 67-year-old at a medical clinic with chest pain and ECG changes in Geelong; 33 minutes to arrive.
– A 79-year-old with abdominal pain at Newcomb; requested 11.34am, dispatched 1.14pm; case was cancelled as patient went by private means. No ambulance arrival.
Mr Murrell said the worst case involved a 29-year-old Geelong West old mother who had given birth six weeks previously. She was reportedly bleeding heavily in the shower and in an altered conscious state due to blood loss.
A request for an ambulance was lodged at11.57am and paramedics arrived at 12.41pm, taking 44 minutes.
In addition, on Monday, a 10-year-old boy with a history of epilepsy was suffering fits in Lara. Paramedics took 78 minutes to arrive.
“In one case, a woman who’d been released from hospital in the morning was in excruciating pain but had to wait two hours,” Mr Murrell said.
“The Government keeps saying its spending money on new ambulances and officers but the underlying problem is that the system’s broken and there can never be enough resources.”
Mr Murrell, Belmont delegate of the Ambulance Employees Association of Victoria, said statistical reporting of ambulances was skewed and failed to reflect problems.
He said pay rates were between 17 and 35 per cent lower than in other states.
Paramedics worked 10-hour day shift and 12-hour night shifts that regularly blew out to 14 and 15 hours, he said.
Delays getting to jobs have been compounded at Geelong by well-documented issues waiting to admit patients at Geelong Hospital.
