AUSTRALIAN AMBULANCE WOES CONTINUE

Articles from two States below

The NSW ambulance disgrace continues

Government bureaucrats running a health service are not only a disaster; Some of them are downright nasty -- as we see below:

Some ambulance officers had resorted to getting apprehended violence orders against colleagues because management had dealt so poorly with allegations of bullying and harassment, a parliamentary inquiry was told yesterday. Officials of the Health Services Union said members had no confidence in how the NSW Ambulance Service handled grievances. Some even accused it of being so aggressive towards complainants that it was itself harassing them.

The union officials were giving evidence at the inquiry into the management and operations of the service, which has been inundated with submissions about bullying, harassment and inadequate handling of complaints. The union's industrial manager, Dennis Ravlich, told the inquiry that some officers had been "reduced to seeking AVOs on an ambulance station".

Outside the inquiry, Mr Ravlich told the Herald he knew of "at least three or four" officers who had taken out AVOs against colleagues at their stations in the past five years because they felt so frustrated by a lack of action by management. "It's difficult to comprehend that the workplace had become that dysfunctional," he said. Another union official, Raymond Tait, told the inquiry that an eight-year complaint had only just been concluded but was now the subject of an unfair dismissal action before the Industrial Relations Commission. He told the Herald a complainant had been unfairly sacked last month over an unrelated matter.

Mr Tait said the service had kept secret its 2006 report into the eight-year-old complaint of alleged bullying. The complainant could only read the document but not keep a copy of it. And there was a condition that the person did not reveal its contents.

Mr Tait had told the inquiry earlier that the service's professional standards and conduct unit was "judge, jury and executioner" and rejected too many complaints, hoping they would just go away. The inquiry has received several submissions criticising the unit. It has been called an "absolute joke", likened to the NSW Supreme Court in terms of time delays, and referred to as "pathetic standards and cover up".

Mr Ravlich told the inquiry he was unsure whether bullying and harassment were more prevalent than in other comparable organisations. But he said that in dealing with complainants, the unit took "a rather aggressive approach towards staff . almost to the point of being harassing itself". In other evidence, the union told the inquiry it was not unusual for ambulance officers to work up to 14 hours without a meal break.

The officers' appearance before the committee followed a mass demonstration of more than 200 ambulance staff and paramedics who marched through Martin Place to Parliament House. The protesters demanded the State Government employ another 300 paramedics to ease pressure on staff. One officer at the rally, Warren Boon, of Camden station, said that in 2006-07, NSW ambulance staff had dealt with 1,052,000 cases. "The workload has gone from intense to nigh impossible," he said. "Fatigue is a chronic problem for staff and the shortage is affecting services to the public." He cited a recent incident in which he narrowly saved a cardiac arrest patient. "But if it had occurred any time in the previous six weeks, he would have probably died because of a lack of resources," Mr Boon said.

Ambulance officers were also having to work overtime to boost their modest salaries, he said, which were between $900 and $1000 a week for staff with 15 years' service.

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Qld.: Fire engines sent to cover for ambulances on many occasions

FIRE engines are being forced to respond almost daily to ambulance call-outs with 250 assigned in the past year, according to Emergency Services. Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts said 250 fire-engines were sent to triple-0 ambulance calls last financial year. Firefighters provided first aid or CPR at 208 of the cases while the remaining 42 cases involved assisting invalids.

Mr Roberts said fire service crews were not used as automatic first responders in ambulance call-outs. He said the cases represented only 0.4 per cent of all fire call-outs. "The reality is, however, that they are very often the first on scene where people have been injured," he said.

The figures were revealed in a parliamentary estimates hearing under questioning from Opposition emergency services spokesman Ted Malone. Mr Malone said every Queenslander paying the $100-a-year ambulance levy deserved to see a Queensland Ambulance Service staffer if they called for medical assistance.

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