'Who gets the lights and sirens?': Paramedics protest lack of resources

Ms Peers, who is acting duty manager at the Ballarat State Emergency Communication Centre, is responsible for organising adequate ambulance coverage across regional Victoria.

During a typical day for Ms Peers, Geelong will regularly be the first city left without a single ambulance to service it, with Bendigo often following between about 9am and 10am, and Ballarat not long after that.

At an Ambulance Victoria worker strike on Monday, March 25, 2024, Ms Peers told The Courier Ballarat was down to just the single ambulance by 10.30am.

When there are not enough ambulances to meet the number of emergencies, it's Ms Peers' job to decide which call to prioritise.

She said this was a regular occurrence as regional health resources had not increased in line with population growth.

"It's stressful because you're sitting there trying to make a decision as to who gets the lights and sirens response over someone that doesn't," she said.

"I'll speak to the clinicians and I'll say 'I've got one ambulance and I've got two jobs, both of them need a lights and sirens response, I need you to tell me which one to send the car to, the other one's going to be waiting half an hour or longer.'"

"It's pretty disheartening and I think 'have I done everything I can do?', and even when I have, it's still 'do I have to wear this if something goes wrong?"

The lack of ambulances is a particular problem during night shifts, where there are just four vehicles which service Ballarat.

Of the four ambulances, Ms Peers said it's common for a couple to be used for patient transfers between medical facilities, while the others will likely face extended wait times at hospitals.

"You should be able to turn a job over in 45 minutes in a place like Ballarat, but jobs are taking hours and hours, and a lot of that's getting stuck at hospitals," she said.

"My concern is the hospitals are underfunded, our cars are getting stuck at the hospital, and we don't have enough resources in the community as it is."

Because of these delays, Ms Peers said there was a burden on paramedics to work hours of incidental overtime, which was part of the reason behind the industrial action.

On March 25, a group of Ambulance Victoria workers at the Ballarat State Communication Centre walked off the job for an hour to protest these problems, as well as to bring attention to stalled enterprise bargaining negotiations.

One worker who has considered leaving the profession owing to the current conditions is communications support paramedic Jade Kearney.

Ms Kearney, who is the mother to two young children, said the high demands of the job had made it difficult for her to juggle family and work life.

"I've got a young family and it's hard to sometimes get a flexible work agreement across the line in the organisation," she said.

"Unfortunately childcare doesn't always have flexibility, as a mum of two young children they're my priority as well.

"So it's about being there for them, and still being able to work and having an employer that obviously assist in that way, but it hasn't always been like that."

Ms Kearney said she had spoken to a lot of colleagues who had also considered leaving because of the stress of the job.

"People are looking for different careers and different options so that we can be home with our families," she said.

"These are crews that have families, they've got kids to pick up at childcare, they've got to get home to their family, they need to have a good balance as well and they're getting burnt out because of all the incidental overtime."

In addition to hours of overtime, Ms Kearney said it was stressful patients weren't receive proper care as they had to wait extended periods for ambulances which sometimes come from other cities.

"There may be 20 to 40 [minutes] up to an hour plus [wait times] sometimes, and they can be the sickest of patients unfortunately," she said.

"Obviously we want the best patient outcome, and at times that's not happening."

This is something communication support and MICA paramedic Kevin Kelly also agrees with.

He said ambulances were regularly being moved unnecessarily to transport patients around the state, which left shortfalls in their designated areas.

"The reason [Ballarat] has multiple ambulances is because it's a big town, and it needs that number of ambulances for its own people," he said.

"But we're sending them off to neighbouring towns to support the next job that's coming from there, so there's no way to win that.

"As a paramedic working here I'm left looking at people who we can't send an ambulance to and I've got to wait.

"Sometimes it's okay, they might be comfortable, but other times they're not comfortable and it's not alright, but we have no choice."

In a statement to The Courier on March 22, Ambulance Victoria operational communications executive director Danielle North said ambulance availability and patient safety would be unaffected by Monday's strike.

"Ambulance Victoria has taken steps to ensure continuation of our service delivery from the Ballarat State Emergency Communication Centre while staff rostered at this location undertake a protected one-hour stop work action," she said.

"Ambulance Victoria continues to negotiate in good faith with employee representatives towards a mutually beneficial Ambulance Victoria Enterprise Agreement 2024."