VIC - Ambos in crisis

mary&mat

mary&mat

There were 60 unanswered ambo calls this weekend; a 33 yo female died in the cbd after waiting 30mins for an ambo & parents had to drive their child from Werribee to the Royal Childrens as no ambulances were available...

Man, I'm driving myself (or getting a taxi) there, I'm not even going to bother calling for one!

Such a shame, we pay our ambo membership & it doesn't seem there will be one there should we need it.

Really feel for the paramedics as they sound overworked & undersupplied with essentials.

Which party will actually do something to rectify this?

Do we have to wait til somone in power is directly affected?
 
nsw was/is cronic too - but a large part of the problem is that ambo's have to respond to every call they recieve as they are not allowed to "assess" the gravity of the situation over the phone.

the department released a string of the pathetic calls they get, and the media had a field day - from a boil on a bottom, to minor head colds ... and by attending to these waste of time calls, they are unable to attend to life threatening incidences.

apparently nearly 80% of calls to the ambos in nsw are non-urgent.
 
Why would someone pony up for the job?

They get abused, most of their calls are to overdosed druggies who waste the resource, they revive them and get attacked, the hours are brutal and the pay is not all that exciting for the grief.

People just go; "Nah; I'm going for the nice 9-5 IT coosh job - for the same money or better, thanks".

And don't get me started on Nannas who use the service as a taxi.

It's like people with flat tyres these days...

Everyone whinges about how long it takes for the RACV to come, but most of their call-outs are for flat tyres for christ sake.

Change yer own bloody tyres; it's not that hard. :rolleyes: and leave the call outs for real problems.
 
I can't believe how people use these emergency services! I had a friend once who cut his finger and called an ambulance because he was new to the town and couldn't drive himself to a hospital. It was a cut finger, not a cut off finger! I remember a few years ago my previous boss telling me he called 000 because people were hooning up and down his street! I couldn't believe it when he told me. I would have just called the local police, couldn't imagine holding up the emergency line when someone could be dying. It's the same with ambulances in traffic, the number of times I see an ambulance trying to get through and people just continue on their merry way making no effort to get out of the way. I almost "panic" when I see an ambulance behind me and will do anything to get out of it's way including pull right off the road if I have to! :mad:
 
mary&mat said:
There were 60 unanswered ambo calls this weekend; a 33 yo female died in the cbd after waiting 30mins for an ambo & parents had to drive their child from Werribee to the Royal Childrens as no ambulances were available...
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Do you know the reason for these problems?
 
In the mid-90's (for those who can remember it), the Kennett government introduced a new ambulance dispatch system (Intergraph) and one of the issues at the time was the unanswered calls and the delays in getting to patients. It was a very hot political issue at the time. (It was in the context of significant spending cuts and much more adverse economic time for Vic), but I am surprised at the pretty tepid media and political response from all parties to this.
 
I've had an ambulance call out once, when I was at school because I was in class talking to a few friends and passed out cold. I think if I was at home my Mum wouldn't have called an ambulance, although I was out for a good few minutes so she may have.

I've had so many accidents - Including my recent one, where I didn't call an ambulance, why? I wasn't dying.

Emergency services should be reserved for just that, emergencies. Not small cuts, boils and broken toes. They should be allowed to asses situations over the phone, because people die otherwise...
 
Lil Skater said:
I've had an ambulance call out once, when I was at school because I was in class talking to a few friends and passed out cold. I think if I was at home my Mum wouldn't have called an ambulance, although I was out for a good few minutes so she may have.

I've had so many accidents - Including my recent one, where I didn't call an ambulance, why? I wasn't dying.

Emergency services should be reserved for just that, emergencies. Not small cuts, boils and broken toes. They should be allowed to asses situations over the phone, because people die otherwise...
Click to expand...

Just as you've prioritized so do the ambos.

If you're not about to die in the next few minutes they'll keep putting you off while they respond to more urgent cases as they come in.

Sometimes you'll be lucky and they arrive quickly but sometimes you wait a long time.
 
weg said:
Just as you've prioritized so do the ambos.

If you're not about to die in the next few minutes they'll keep putting you off
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Didn't someone say they're not allowed to asses the case, therefore respond to every call as they come?

I think they should be able to tell people, you're not dying get yourself there if they're under the pump, unless of course the patient is by themselves and there's no way around it.

For instance in that article, there was a lady that waited 3 hours, no this shouldn't happen but she had two strong men and a van available that could've gotten her and her dislocated knee to the hospital just fine - she didn't *need* an ambulance.
 
BV said:
It looks like in VIC they have some unique problems and this is what Mary&Mat were referring to
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vi...s-say-paramedics/story-e6frf7kx-1225932234797
Click to expand...

I does sound like there are some holdups but clearly some of those people in the article waiting a long time are not urgent, ie. Abdominal pain ?, broken arm ?, ambulance transport ? (disabled/access cabs are for this).

If these people used alternative transport some of the ambos would most definitely be freed up for the other more urgent cases resulting in quicker response times.
 
Lil Skater said:
Didn't someone say they're not allowed to asses the case, therefore respond to every call as they come?
Click to expand...

If someone has collapsed unconscious or is semiconscious or suffered life threatening injuries (think car accidents) the ambos would be there within minutes.

None of those people in the article were in that predicament.

What they didn't mention is the waiting times for the most urgent cases. Now long waits there would be a huge concern.
 
weg said:
What they didn't mention is the waiting times for the most urgent cases. Now long waits there would be a huge concern.
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I'd like to know how there was a guy who was poisoned and died due to the lack of medical assistance - same as the lady who died because of a seizure.

I'd imagine that those cases should be pretty quick - but they weren't quick enough.

Maybe they should introduce some way that the operators can asses a situation and have the right to tell people that they must make their own way there? Harsh I know, but if you are not dying and can communicate then they should make their own way to the hospital and if they don't, then they didn't need an ambulance.
 
These people would be easy to sort out. I imagine it's the majority in between that are trickier.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vi...s-and-toothaches/story-e6frf7kx-1225932916657

A one off seizure in itself doesn't usually kill. Possibly 'one' of the reason the ambos did not get there quickly.

Then there are people that ingest poisons frequently but usually not enough or toxic enough to kill. Was the man a one off or know to them for this kind of behaviour? What was the poison?

It's very infrequently the ambos cop flack in the coroners courts, here is SA anyway.

Then there are the ED's. During busy times a significant percentage are 'coughs and colds', mental health patients and people wanting human contact or a bed for the night. And they're just the walk in ones.
 
Found out a lil bit more about the waits...the ambulances have to wait outside the ER depts til a bed can be found for their patient.

So...maybe it's more the entire hospital system that's falling apart and this ambo delay is just one of the symptoms of it's breakdown/s.
 
mary&mat said:
the ambulances have to wait outside the ER depts til a bed can be found for their patient.
So...maybe it's more the entire hospital system that's falling apart and this ambo delay is just one of the symptoms of it's breakdown/s.
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Sounds like the hospital emergency depts can't cope with the number of patients and I'm guessing that the problem exists mostly in Melbourne?

Maybe they need to build some 24/7 medical centres next to each hospital
 
a lot of the problem is that sicknesses that people would, in the past, go to their local gp about end up going to the hospital because they don't/can't pay the $60/15mins

so the ER ends up choked with head colds, druggies, feeling ill's, elderly outliving their bodies etc
 
Sounds like the hospital emergency depts can't cope with the number of patients and I'm guessing that the problem exists mostly in Melbourne?

Maybe they need to build some 24/7 medical centres next to each hospital
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I work in an ED in Newcastle. They have done just that - an after hours clinic next door. Triage sends the GP sort of clients down the hall. Works pretty well actually.

I used to go out with an ambo. He told me about a guy who called them 17 times in one day to go to the ED. He's now on some kind of "black list".
 
Qld - Community Ambulance Cover

Queenslanders pay a Community Ambulance Cover of 29.005cents per day on every electricity bill they pay. If you can visualise how many millions of dollars that should be putting into our ambulance service, you would think that most suburbs should have their own ambulance or two. Yet there are still stories in the News that emergency calls haven't been catered for!
Wonder how much of the CAC goes into the government coffers as administration funds.
Live out on a property so all our money contributed will be for nought as we would have to get the patient into the car and drive them in to town ourselves.
Frizzle
 
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