Towns at risk amid paramedic shortage

Ambulance Employees Union secretary Danny Hill said stress and high workloads were resulting in paramedics calling in sick, or not volunteering to work overtime to fill gaps in rosters, meaning crews from Creswick, Daylesford, Beaufort and other nearby towns were often responding to calls in Ballarat.

On a recent Saturday night, there were reportedly no highly-trained MICA paramedics working and only two advanced life support officers on duty across Ballarat, in addition to regular crews.

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"Two advanced life support for 120,000 people in Ballarat is pretty concerning," Mr Hill said.

"There have been a lot of dropped shifts, in particular MICA shifts, that normally operate as a single responder unit supporting other crews," Mr Hill said.

"They are not running at the normal complement of staff, and having to fill staff with either graduate paramedics or community officers."

There are fears the reported shortages will lead to worse outcomes for patients.

"We need more paramedics, we need more resources in rural Victoria. It's starting to get dangerous and we fear there will be patients suffering," Mr Hill said.

A combination of a high workload and extra COVID measures over the past nine months, plus a reliance from Ambulance Victoria on paramedics working overtime to fill gaps in rosters particularly in rural areas, was behind the problem, Mr Hill said.

"The workload is high, there's a lot of dropped shifts as people get tired, fatigued and call in sick.

"They are getting tired, morale is quite low, people are feeling stressed. They want their day off but the system relies on people volunteering their time on their day off - it's not safe."

While the number of ambulance callouts dropped significantly during lockdown, ambulance crews were forced to don and doff personal protective equipment for each call and decontaminate their ambulance after every patient.

Delays in transferring patients in to the care of BHS emergency department have also held up crews from attending other jobs, the union said.

"There's been a number of issues and it's been very busy since restrictions have eased, but I think rural Victoria has really been caught off guard by the workload coming back to what it was pre-COVID," Mr Hill said.

"Everywhere has been busy but Ballarat and Bendigo have been two of the busiest areas most recently."

Ambulance Victoria said they felt staffing levels in Ballarat were meeting the needs of the community.

"Ambulance Victoria has experienced an increase demand across the state, as Victorians emerge from eight months of COVID-19 restrictions. The easing of restrictions, combined with extreme weather conditions and a reluctance to seek medical treatment during the peak of the pandemic are all contributing factors to the increase in demand. We expect this increased demand will continue over the busy summer and Christmas period," they said in a statement.

"In providing an emergency health service to the Victorian community, we routinely deal with peaks and troughs of activity, and manage these fluctuations as they occur. Ambulance Victoria has a state-wide whole-of-system approach which allows us to distribute ambulances across the state, to ensure patients continue to be seen and cared for in a timely manner.

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"As delays are identified, we also work closely with the relevant hospital to free up ambulances, getting them back out on the road as quickly as possible."

Ballarat Health Services director of acute operations Ben Kelly said there had been an increase in presentations to the emergency department recently, in patients arriving via ambulance or presenting themselves in the ED.

"No matter how they arrive at emergency, all patients are triaged by highly trained nurses who determine how serious the injury or illness is, and the most unwell or critical cases are seen first. Stringent infection prevention and control measures remain in place across Ballarat Health Services, and significantly more nursing staff are rostered on to support these measures," Mr Kelly said.

"This, coupled with an increase in patients presenting to the emergency department, can lead to longer wait times for those with non-emergency or non-acute illness or injury."