How is it not obvious that in order to recruit and retain staff, you need to pay an attractive wage. Especially for a job as important as this. No one is going to become a paramedic with the dreadful money they’re on.
Savagely tough course to finish as you need to do your work experience and continue to hand in heavy college work every week. You’ll get stuck with the awful night hours and still expected to hit the sunday deadline for your assignments.
PAY. THEM. MORE.
Burnout = More time off
Work on ambulances.
This ISNT BURNOUT FROM COVID.
Hell when covid was at its height we had less calls because idiots weren’t going to hospital for minor complaints.
Sure covid was tough and scary at times but the volume of work is there the whole time.
If it were mostly echo and delta calls things might be easier (obviously more difficult cases but less volume).
However we get sent to every ridiculous boo boo and people absolutely abuse the service.
A number of times a ‘patient’ has given a conspiratorial wink and told me he called the ambulance so he wouldn’t have to queue (spoiler alert. They queue like everybody else if not life threatening).
More times I get handed the hospital bag as a 9 months pregnant lady who has her first contraction walks past the two cars in the drive way for her yellow taxi to the hospital.
Again there’s GPs (always the same ones) who call ambulances like taxis so someone can have a blood test).
Just like the ED is a bottleneck into the hospital system we are used by everyone to get to that bottleneck.
THATS WHAT CAUSES THE BURNOUT.
Being sent from Billy to jack doing garbage cases because “everyone gets an ambulance”.
To any ambulance staff that read this, thank you for the amazing work you do. I lost my partner to cancer 2 months ago, we had to get to the hospital by ambulance as she was having uncontrollable seizures. The paramedics managed to keep me calm, get her stable (as stable as could be for someone having seizures every minute), and get us to the hospital as fast as possible. When we got there a nurse told me I wasn’t allowed in due to covid regulations, the paramedics would not leave my side until I was allowed in to the emergency department with her which made perfect sense as she was completely unresponsive due to all of the seizures so couldn’t give any medical data to them. Without them I would have been left outside the front door of A&E not knowing what was happening to my partner, complete and utter stupidity by that nurse to try to do that when a patient is unresponsive
I felt bad for the ambulance staff, they looked exhausted and it was very clear they were completely sick of some parts of their job. They repeatedly told me that I would have to give all of my partners medical information to the doctors again because odds are they will skip everything the paramedics write down as quite a few doctors don’t think much of the paramedics at all (paramedics words, not mine)
I have a close relative who is a paramedic with the national ambulance service. She says the money isn’t the issue, there’s shift premium etc which brings the money up a bit.
The issue is the way you’re treated. There’s a culture of bullying, management are completely incompetent. If a call comes in ten minutes before you finish you’re bullied and threatened with disciplinary action till you do it. This call could be in the next county but due to understaffing they’re the nearest resource. 12hr shift and then 2-3 hours late everyday.
7 comments
How is it not obvious that in order to recruit and retain staff, you need to pay an attractive wage. Especially for a job as important as this. No one is going to become a paramedic with the dreadful money they’re on.
Savagely tough course to finish as you need to do your work experience and continue to hand in heavy college work every week. You’ll get stuck with the awful night hours and still expected to hit the sunday deadline for your assignments.
PAY. THEM. MORE.
Burnout = More time off
Work on ambulances.
This ISNT BURNOUT FROM COVID.
Hell when covid was at its height we had less calls because idiots weren’t going to hospital for minor complaints.
Sure covid was tough and scary at times but the volume of work is there the whole time.
If it were mostly echo and delta calls things might be easier (obviously more difficult cases but less volume).
However we get sent to every ridiculous boo boo and people absolutely abuse the service.
A number of times a ‘patient’ has given a conspiratorial wink and told me he called the ambulance so he wouldn’t have to queue (spoiler alert. They queue like everybody else if not life threatening).
More times I get handed the hospital bag as a 9 months pregnant lady who has her first contraction walks past the two cars in the drive way for her yellow taxi to the hospital.
Again there’s GPs (always the same ones) who call ambulances like taxis so someone can have a blood test).
Just like the ED is a bottleneck into the hospital system we are used by everyone to get to that bottleneck.
THATS WHAT CAUSES THE BURNOUT.
Being sent from Billy to jack doing garbage cases because “everyone gets an ambulance”.
To any ambulance staff that read this, thank you for the amazing work you do. I lost my partner to cancer 2 months ago, we had to get to the hospital by ambulance as she was having uncontrollable seizures. The paramedics managed to keep me calm, get her stable (as stable as could be for someone having seizures every minute), and get us to the hospital as fast as possible. When we got there a nurse told me I wasn’t allowed in due to covid regulations, the paramedics would not leave my side until I was allowed in to the emergency department with her which made perfect sense as she was completely unresponsive due to all of the seizures so couldn’t give any medical data to them. Without them I would have been left outside the front door of A&E not knowing what was happening to my partner, complete and utter stupidity by that nurse to try to do that when a patient is unresponsive
I felt bad for the ambulance staff, they looked exhausted and it was very clear they were completely sick of some parts of their job. They repeatedly told me that I would have to give all of my partners medical information to the doctors again because odds are they will skip everything the paramedics write down as quite a few doctors don’t think much of the paramedics at all (paramedics words, not mine)
I have a close relative who is a paramedic with the national ambulance service. She says the money isn’t the issue, there’s shift premium etc which brings the money up a bit.
The issue is the way you’re treated. There’s a culture of bullying, management are completely incompetent. If a call comes in ten minutes before you finish you’re bullied and threatened with disciplinary action till you do it. This call could be in the next county but due to understaffing they’re the nearest resource. 12hr shift and then 2-3 hours late everyday.