NWAS paramedic speaks of 'dangerous' lack of resources in emergency care

A paramedic from the North West Ambulance Service says the lack of resources in emergency health care is now posing a risk to life.

It comes as new figures from the GMB Union reveal one in four ambulance workers in the UK have witnessed a death, which they believe is due to delays, in the last three years.

Almost 3,000 ambulance staff responded to the survey, in which nearly half also admitted to spending an entire shift queuing outside a hospital A&E department with a patient.

Paul Turner is a paramedic, as well as the union's deputy branch secretary for the north west, he says the system is broken: "Unfortunately the number of calls we get now far outweighs the resources available. It's not unusual for me to drive up to an hour to an emergency on blue lights and sirens. That already means you've got a delay because I'm an hour away. That can be daily.

"The other issue that we've had for many, many years is the hospital delays. We get up to a hospital and we're sat queuing outside, so that obviously means we struggle to get a resource out to the community when we need one.

"It's very frustrating because you join the ambulance service to be able to provide lifesaving skills to a member of the public, but unfortunately most of your time is spent outside hospitals queuing up. You often hear calls coming over the radio set saying "category one emergency, anyone available to clear?" - And a category one call is the highest priority to the ambulance service, but you can't go because you've still got your patient."

The results of the GMB Union survey can be seen below, it was completed by ambulance workers, control centre workers and 999 and 111 call handlers:

• 24.4% of ambulance workers had witnessed a death due to delays during the past three years

• 31% know of a case where this has happened

• Almost half (43%) spent an entire shift waiting outside A&E in past three years

• 82% have suffered verbal abuse in the past three years, with 33 per cent suffering physical attacks

• 70% have considered leaving the service in the past year

Paul says it's not just hospital delays that can cause issues day to day: "What also doesn't help is when people call ambulances inappropriately. Even if an ambulance turns up, there's no guarantee that we'll take you to hospital. Our role is to try and keep you out of hospital as much as we can so that we don't impact on that delay. That's obviously done in the safest and most appropriate way, but then the amount of paperwork that's required afterwards could take between 45 minutes to an hour. So again, we're stuck outside someone's address doing paperwork instead of a hospital.

"The last shift I did, we got eight or nine calls in the day and I only took one patient to hospital; so you can see the proportion of people who actually do not need to go to hospital. The system is broken and I don't know what the answer is right now."

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