Paramedic calls for action on critical shortage of ambulance crews in New South Wales

Australian Paramedics Association’s Liu Bianchi says NSW Ambulance is suffering from a shortage of staff which is leading to fatigue and safety issues for paramedics. “Basically, NSW Ambulance have the same staffing levels - we call them minimum operating levels - since 2010,” she said. “So that means we are working with the same number of staff on our roads as we did in 2010 - so 11 years ago. “Despite that the service maintains these levels are sufficient to meet the demand from the community who are ringing 000 and yet there is so much evidence to state otherwise”. Ms Bianchi told Sky News the shortage of staff means there are a lot more “single responses” to incidents and paramedics are “always just making do”. “And making do isn’t good enough anymore,” she said. “So we want to see that the ambulance service start taking this issue seriously because when we reach status two and status three which we did this week - which means there are absolutely zero ambulances available to respond to 000 calls - that’s just not good enough”.

from Breaking National News and Australian News | Daily Telegraph https://ift.tt/3u4XfQO