By Kristy McDonald
AMBULANCE Victoria has accused the ambulance union of undermining public confidence in the service with “inaccurate and baseless” claims of fatigue-related errors by officers.
Ambulance Victoria general manager operations Keith Young said a recent survey released by Ambulance Employees Australia, which indicated more than one-third of officers were preparing to quit due to working conditions and were making errors, was an insult.
“It is disappointing that the union is trying to benefit from the issue of fatigue during an enterprise bargaining process while we are actually taking steps and introducing initiatives that will lead to better sharing of workload, reducing the number of night shifts paramedics need to work and generally bolstering staff numbers,” Mr Young said.
“I am not aware of any way that increased salaries reduce the feeling of fatigue, while we … have introduced a number of measures that are done to directly reduce the amount of workload for individual paramedics and to reduce the frequency of their night shifts.
“We recognise the seriousness of the issue of fatigue and are taking steps to address this.”
Mr Young said Ambulance Victoria was in the metropolitan area actively working with paramedics to change some rosters so they were able to work fewer night shifts.
“These sort of initiatives have been really well received by the paramedics and this combined with new ambulance teams starting in the area will go a long way to keeping their job enjoyable,” he said.
Mr Young said Ambulance Victoria employed a stringent clinical audit process that had not revealed any evidence that paramedics were making errors.
He said a recent review of more than 130,000 cases had shown a drug compliance of 99 per cent.
“If the union claims held any truth this figure would be much lower and indicate some level of error, but instead it shows our paramedics performing as some of the best in the world,” Mr Young said.
“The reality is already that in the western suburbs none of our paramedics have a roster with less than a 10-hour break and that occurs at most once in a four-day cycle followed by four days off, while some paramedics on these new rosters actually have a minimum 14-hour break between shifts.”
Victorian Health Minister Daniel Andrews did not comment on the issue, however a spokesperson for the Minister said the state’s April 2008 funding announcement for Victorian ambulance services was aimed at alleviating the workload of paramedics.
“The Brumby Government recently announced a $185.7 million ambulance package to boost ambulance service across the state,” he said.
“That money is to rebuild or upgrade 59 stations, recruit 258 new paramedics and fund two new choppers.
“The Government values the work of state paramedics and will continue to support them in the future.”
