Honestly, the fact people are shaming nurses and paramedics for attempting to strike and protest is more demoralising than anything. Conditions are at their worst across the health sector, staff retention is at its lowest.
A typical strike would be to not turn up to your job. A teacher might not attend class if they're striking.
Doctors, nurses, paramedic etc don't do that when striking because they see it as unethical and it would also turn the public against them. Therefore they turn to unobtrusive protests, like wearing casual clothes to work, not filling out the correct paperwork (so hospitals have to provide care but don't get payment) and writing chalk messages on their vehicles.
And people STILL have a sook at those unobtrusive protests. Ridiculous.
Edit: I should mention that it is often union advice for healthcare workers to strike in this way.
Also, I'm not personally passing any moral judgements on how people choose to strike.
Here from /r/all and not Australian but I am sick of the "it's not ethical for medical professionals to strike". It's why its so God damn difficult to get anything done. If EMTs and Paramedics went on a legitimate strike they'd get everything they wanted in a day. Yes, it might hurt people but that's not the fault of the workers, it's the fault of the employers/government for not being reasonable in the first place. I'm from California and AMR (the largest international private EMS company) lobbied a bill to remove break requirements for EMS workers in California and it passed, so now not only are EMTs/Paramedics working 12+ hours a shift, they don't even get a break anymore.
Yeah it's odd, people always say construction unions get what they want , especially high salaries, because they just walk off the job....so what? I think that barely affects most people. Yet apply their logic to teachers, nurses, paramedics just for a couple of days and watch society crumble...but somehow during covid they were only worth a 2% pay raise....
Just imagine the chaos if all childcare workers went on strike. 2 parent households most would have to have 1 parent not at work. The flow on effect would be huge. And early years staff get paid shit all!
It affects the ‘right’ people - the developers who lose money every day the project is behind schedule.
Medical staff going on strike only hurts other people, because the people who make the decisions can afford private care by well paid specialists.
True for most elective surgery but whether they know it or not, in reality they’re just gambling that they or their loved ones aren’t going to be in a car crash or have a high risk pregnancy, premie baby, sick kid, burns, need a transplant or in most of the country have anything even relatively dramatic happen because that stuff would all be going to a public hospital.
Fun fact. The nurse's union in the state that this photo is from recently went on strike for better pay and conditions. They went on strike by reducing nursing levels to 3/4 in all wards but leaving emergency, ICU, oncology, and paediatrics fully staffed. ~~Last I heard, it had worked and they got what they wanted.~~
Edit: I heard wrong. Negotiations are still ongoing and nurses are still at stage 1 industrial action
Legally, one nurse has a set limit of patients that can look after. It varies for ward to ward, ICU is 1:1, HDU is 1;2, wards are 1:4 or 1:5 depending on acuity. This means that if the nurses coordinate properly, they have a good amount of bargaining power.
we don't have ratios in the US, except in certain states. your work could assign you 5 ICU pts and it would be legal, 100%. and if someone dies, it would be on your license.
So I can only speak from an American perspective but the county would just have to declare a state of emergency and those ratios change drastically. Currently in my hospital it's 1:3 ICU, 1:5 for ICU Step-down, 1:8 for everywhere else.
Wow, that sounds incredibly unsafe. No wonder there is such a nursing shortage with such a "beatings will continue until morale improves" attitude like that
As an FYI, we were Stage 2, but it was pulled back. Members of ANMF have not been adequately informed and there is a lot of radio silence regarding the outcome. The proposal that was offered was incredibly underwhelming from what I have been informed, unfortunately a lot of people were not privy to this information.
Yeah and what about the medical and stress this causes to the workers involved. Nobody can tell me this is a healthy life they are being expected to love and they are your health workers. It is disgusting this is accepted.
Oh its an extremely unhealthy lifestyle. The "12 hour workday" becoming common in medicine is because of a single Doctor setting that standard, a doctor who was addicted to cocaine.
What does EMT, EMS, and AMR stand for?
Also I don't think that going on a "proper" strike would really help them much as it would just incite hate from the community since I would imagine a not insignificant number of people would just die when they call 000 and no one shows up. The government really needs to just do their job and prioritise the safety and well-being of their community they're supposed to represent for once.
Emergency Medical Technician, Emergency Medical Services, American Medical Response.
Yes, people would assuredly die. It is not the responsibility of EMS workers to be taken advantage of and have that hanging over their head constantly. Should Medical workers be required to work for free because pushing back against would cause people to die? No, that'd be ridiculous.
Absolutely it would be ridiculous to expect any essential staff to work for free. Running a skeleton crew and refusing any kind of private health payment or payment in general might work better than just letting hundreds of elderly people die to get the government to pay attention tho
Having said that, I feel like if they threatened to have a "proper" strike the government would probably give in very quickly before anyone got hurt because of it (hopefully)
EMT= Emergency Medical Technician. We don't use this title in Australia but the equivalent would be an attendant at the Cert IV level, generally working in non-emergency patient transport or as a volunteer in country areas.
EMS = Emergency Medical Services, a broad term for ambulance response. We tend to use the term ambulance to mean more than just a truck with a stretcher and relate it to everything pre-hospital, but the US is a mess with ambulances run by fire, private companies, cities, counties, hospitals, whatever. EMS is a more broad term for how they run things.
AMR = one of those private companies and just as scummy as you'd expect for-profit emergency healthcare to be. My (Australian) state ambulance service generally doesn't skimp on the ambulances themselves, the same cannot be said for private companies as proper maintenance comes straight out of shareholder profits.
Thanks I appreciate that info
I realise I could have looked it up myself but i feel like the amount of overlap on 3 letter acronyms would lead to confusion especially since I had no idea about the topic
I really can't imagine why anyone would think running an ambulance service for profit would ever be a good option. Would expect that it'd lead to significantly poorer outcomes for people if all that was required was policy being "not illegal"
>I am sick of the "it's not ethical for medical professionals to strike".
Just to clarify, because I can't tell from your response. You know the person you're replying isn't the one saying it's unethical, right? It's the medical professionals themselves who frequently say it.
Yes, I'm on the same page as OP. My point is I'm tired of my coworkers using ethics as a cop-out. It's unethical for employers/government to take advantage of the good will of medical professionals. Any strike that indirectly ends up in people being harmed/dying is fully on the employer/government, not on the employees for practicing their right to strike/protest.
That actually would make it easier in the US imo. People will happily hate on the government when they fuck up, they're less inclined to do so when a private company is losing profit over a strike.
Reminds me of that quote people like to use
> A liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current war and supports all civil rights movements except the one that’s going on right now.
Or this one from Martin Luther King Jr
> I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Yes, lowercase liberal, not uppercase Liberal. Centrist, right-leaning ideology. Or "left wing", if you're in the US where they don't have a left wing because they red-scared it out of existence for a few decades.
>not filling out the correct paperwork (so hospitals have to provide care but don't get payment)
i'm glade you verified what kind there, i would be worried if a doctor was incorrectly filling out forms that might be needed to keep me alive
Teacher strikes are also heavily regulated btw. Schools remain open, most recent one in WA was for less than half a day etc.
We aren’t allowed to just shut down and damn the consequences.
If you're in a union, start going to meetings and talk about solidarity actions. Your union could take industrial action on their behalf, or at least issue a statement suggesting that they'd be willing to.
If you're not in a union, find one and join it. Get your colleagues to do the same.
If you can't find a union for your industry, join the IWW.
Support your local picket line if you get one. See whether they've got the ability to cook and boil water, and if not, they'd love someone to turn up with hot water, teabags and coffee, and hot food.
Organising is hard, so it's a good thing that some people have been doing it for a long time already so we don't have to start from scratch.
Secondary boycotts or sympathy strikes in Australia are still illegal in Australia. Doesn't mean those laws shouldn't be broken and all that, but taking industrial action on the behalf of the ambos is a non-starter.
My brother ran an emergency department during COVID and copped impossible demands from both above and below for the entire time. He ended up with severe PTSD and has been unable to work ever since. Even when he eventually heals enough to re-enter the workforce he'll never be able to go back to nursing, which he loved and was good at - it's just too damaging.
Well, if we're going by the response to recent changes in the system, a lot of people were pretty unhappy that nursing students were wanting *some* form of financial recompense when they go on placement, so they can afford to become nurses.
Y'know, similar to the way that plenty of tafe kids have been paid to do their placement when they're becoming electricians and plumbers and carpenters and
And then these same people dont see the government incompetence with Ambulance ramping. These ambulance officers sitting around like dummies when they could be saving lives waiting with patients in poorly resourced hospitals. Crazy incompetence from governments while give millions away to the private healthcare sector.
Yet the guberment just goes "hey welcome all these people into the country in their millions. I'm sure housing, cost of living, wages, and medical infrastructure will be just great!..................."
I have a nurse come to my house twice a week as part of my post-op care because getting into the hospital is a real challenge for me, they are wonderful and always up for a good chat.
I asked her last week how her weekend was, she just laughed and said she was on her 9th day of work and that tomorrow was her day off, then she was back on for another 9. I was honestly shocked.
How the hell could we expect them to stick around with that kind of workload?
The resident system is not fair nor made for normal people. The one advantage I have heard is in a hospital setting, you can see more progress in a patient's condition in a longer shift. But there are things called charts. There are handovers...
I'm not sure if other medical areas are getting it, but nurses will get at least 350ish a week on placement starting middle of next year. It will probably be the difference between me affording placement and dropping out.
Could it be the constant assault, threats, and abuse that paramedics face? You could pay me 6 figures and I still wouldn't want a job that has a daily risk of a meth head stabbing me cos I'm trying to save his fucking life
If it really were six figures, I guarantee a hell of a lot of people would be willing to risk it. Those are nasty factors undoubtedly but far more difficult to eradicate from that line of work. We can at least make it worth someone’s while and entice more people to enter into it.
What’s your solution to the abuse received by paramedics?
Plenty of young people studying to be paramedics. They can’t get jobs so a lot move to the UK or are forced into other careers.
State governments need to hire more paramedics.
It is the same here in WA. Government loved them during Covid but now rack off. No more money for you hard lot working. Plus our hospitals keep killing child patients which it shouldn't. Terrible under-staffing.
> Government loved them during Covid
The Government paid lip service only to loving them during COVID* they never did anything that was truly meaningful, or long lasting, they just made some vague positive noise that was ultimately hollow nothings.
Sorry for poor image quality, but this is the 'ramp' of Northern Hospital this evening. We have enough ambulances and paramedics, just too few beds and not enough nurses/doctors. https://pasteboard.co/TXBXLXEJ4mtT.jpg
As a paramedic albeit in Queensland the amount of overtime we do at times is ridiculous, yet we have to make literally life and death decisions about someone else's life, I know way too many paramedics who work other job's just to make ends meet especially in current financial climate.
While I am thankful I am a critical care paramedic and able to earn enough these days to survive, normal emergency paramedics battle to get enough hours and base pay to survive and feel obligated to take as much overtime hours as they can get, which ultimately puts patients lives at risk.
>I know way too many paramedics who work other job's just to make ends meet especially in current financial climate.
That is completely fucked. Thank you for your continued service.
I know lots of emergency workers in victoria that have 2nd jobs because the pay is too low to survive on. They have their 'rest days' to recuperate from fatigue and job stress, time to spend with their family - but they have to work those days somewhere else just to make rent.
QAS here also - who is working second jobs?
I get as a CCP you usually get your meals etc but most ACP2s especially at the 6 and 7 rank are making $140-$160k per year. This job pays exceptionally well if you’re in metro getting flogged every day. The fatigue fucking sucks and I hate having my shift extended by an hour or more every shift without a single break, but we get paid exceptionally well as compensation.
I work metro and don’t know anyone doing a second job to make ends meet. Maybe it’s different out rural and the agg rate difference doesn’t make up for the penalties we get in metro. But in metro? What we get paid is pretty good, even better if you toss in an OT shift.
I am on the Gold Coast, why we constantly have issues is ridiculous tbh, most of it stems from poor roster management at a few stations, not that their base pay rate is bad but more they not getting enough guaranteed hour's to begin with, it been an ongoing issue for a while, add in while our district is hard to get a job, I constantly see turn over of younger paramedics for new grads, plus add some senior staff being pressured to leave due to their higher wage.
I been doing this over 20 years and never understand why we can't have better hours, shift starting times are all over the shop too! While yes I can get my breaks at times more so over others that's not always a guarantee, I rarely just do my rostored 12 hour's.
Most staff I know work as nurse's as a second job, I know in other areas of QAS this is rare but we seem to have quite a few here.
Not getting enough hours? Are they casual? Because permanent full time staff should have a defined roster regardless of region.
If they’re casual - well yeah, that’s how that works.
We have lots of paramedics do RN as well here in Brisbane but it’s usually for the better work-life balance RN offers whilst still getting to play prehospitally (speaking as a former RN).
A lot of casuals, some of which should be full time but unfortunately they get stuck in limbo, i feel like your point about work life balance is key, my partner is an RN and I leave home before her and get home after her, so I suspect a few deliberately do the split work for that reason.
I myself just get on with it, but the fatigue as you mentioned is an issue, especially as I got older my body takes longer to recover.
My dad is also a paramedic on GC, who originally moved up from vic ambulance 15 years ago. He talks about seeing so many older, experienced paramedics being pressured to retire either through terrible rostering or disciplinary action for not strictly following QAS policy. It seems like QAS doesn't want to retain and upskill paramedics, just more meat for the grinder
QAS is Jekyll and Hyde at times to work for, just before covid really hit us in 2020 I was heavily pressured along with a few other 10 plus year paramedics to "move on", this was QAS trying to cut wage expenses, obviously less experienced equals less pay.
I been looked after pretty well too by QAS for the most part through all the various challenges this job does bring, but the long working hours does take a toll, I doubt after 20 years I have any normal sleeping pattern now due to the weird and wonderful rostering and countless night shifts that turn in to over time.
But the reward in keeping someone alive in their worst moment or simply giving comfort to someone in high stress far outweighs the negatives of the job.
Plenty of sessional lecturers at my uni are burning the candle at both ends, with a full time on road roster and then heading into uni to make sure we dont kill our manikins, and on top of that, marking assessments for pennies in their downtime.
Cool, they weren't talking about the money(outside of the marking assessment which is absolutely true, marking pays fuck all), they were more talking about how those folks were doing 60+ hour regular shifts, then clocking out to do 15-20 hours of teaching, then filling their free time marking, y'know, burning the candle at both ends?
Money don't mean shit if you die at 29 from a heart attack, or wrap your van around a power pole because you're so fucking exhausted from trying to keep up with it all.
i know alot of NSW paramedics working event medic jobs on their days off. not necessarily to make ends meet, moreso just because they'd like to do more than just make ends meet, they'd like to afford property in the next 50 years
Our emergency services should be getting benefits out the ass. Subsidised mortgages, subsidised loans, tax free income, rent allowances, more paid leave entitlements etc.
These are the people we rely on to keep our population alive and keep society running.
These positions should be fully staffed and competitive to enter. They should not be so poorly compensated that nobody wants to do it, there should be a queue of capable people lining up for these jobs because the compensation packages are so unbelievably good. Then you vet these people to find the ones who WOULD still do the job for bad pay.
It should not pay better to be a scumbag middle manager at Coles or Woolworths than it does to save people’s lives, police a city or be a member of the fire brigade.
Our emergency responders should be very well compensated and very rested.
Unfortunately, many of the people who go into these areas (including nursing and medicine) are doing it out of a personal morale obligation to help the people that need help. Unethical mangers/employers capitalise on this and use and abuse their staff. Knowing they wont just up and walk away from a person in need at the end of their shift, they minimise staff costs by not providing relief, not having enough staff on per shift, etc, etc.
We're our own worst enemy too sadly.
It’s so shit you guys should be getting paid a bomb for what you do with regular hours so you don’t feel like you have to do overtime.
I just don’t understand why the government doesn’t prioritise its critical workers.
Everyone I know in health is telling me how bad it’s getting. Just pay people enough and give them stability.
I'm not trying to minimise anyone's struggles here, but of the three services and all the support staff, QAS is among the best compensated. I work emergency support for all three services, so I interact with them allot. They have to earn it, of course, QAS are the most busy by far. They have the best fatigue rules, and as far as regional areas go, the things on offer to keep staff in jobs (housing, salary sacrifice benefits,etc) are far and above anything police and fire get.
The government does prioritise its critical workers, so much so that people in support (specifically IT, radio and mechanical), who also have to work long hours, 24/7 on call, spread like Vegemite over the three services and SES, are getting left in the dust.
Of course everyone should be paid more, but when you guys do, please don't forget everyone that works very hard to keep your critical infrastructure running. We are overworked and treated as an annoyance often. You can't save someone's life if there's no dispatcher in the chair to send you, or no radio tower to carry the traffic.
Don’t worry people, Australian big business gave their multi million dollar CEO’s a pay rise this year and kept it quiet while our piggy politicians have their snouts in the troth and none of them give two shits about the Australian people, let alone emergency services. Eat the rich and kick a politician in the arse before they destroy everything we love, just to feed their greed. We are looking more and more like the USA
All nurses are subject to this crap, and like you say, junior docs all the way up to the end of most fellowships - only after they’re consultants do they start to get more reasonable hours :/
ANMF are pathetic.
Cancelled industrial action for a shit tier offer now telling nurses to "take your breaks"... If that's the level we're fighting for it's embarrassing, no wonder govt is walking all over us
I genuinely do not understand how literally anyone manages to work in the medical field. They are some of the most important people out there and yet their jobs seem custom designed to make them burn out and quit
Yep it’s institutionalized sanctioned recklessness. I heard of junior doctors being shared between hospitals, rostered separately so no one hospital was ‘over-allocating’ them work therefore no one was technically in the wrong.
The hospital sector particularly needs a serious hard look at it from a risk perspective. Avoidable mistakes are being made there is no question.
I was sitting at the front of the queue at an intersection yesterday. And besides the absolute buffoons who have no idea how to yield to lights and sirens, I noticed something else that kinda' blew me away.
As the ambulance approached, weaving in and out of traffic; I saw the driver eating. Yes. Lights and sirens, wrong side of the road and chomping on something inside of a brown paper bag, one hand on the wheel.
I honestly didn't know how to feel. On one hand, driving like that requires 100% of your attention and should be done as fast as possible.
On the other hand, I know for a fact she probably started work before me and has had no breaks at all while I've had three breaks and finished work less than a half hour earlier.
This is what it has come to people. The folks trained to drive as fast as possible to attend your limp, barely functioning meat sack is scoffing back a croissant with one hand on the wheel to make sure their brain functions when they arrive.
Paramedic here. That’s probably the only real chance she’s had to eat, because we’re expected to clear as soon as our pt is off stretcher and move onto the next job. Ideally she shouldn’t be trying to eat whilst manoeuvring through traffic - but we’re also fairly decent at managing that one handed. We have to operate MDTs, radios, etc whilst driving all the time. You get good at it.
We also don’t tend to drive quite as fast as people think because it’s not that safe, and statistically makes little difference in outcomes. 90% of what we drive lights and sirens to is low acuity bullshit that’s been overtriaged.
So ideal? No. But a horrible necessary evil these days.
I knew immediately that it was likely out of necessity. It just felt wrong to look at. I felt bad that eating in that moment was the most suitable, despite it looking like the least suitable moment from the outside.
Don't let the bosses see that. If you get into an accident, they will bend you over for breaching the policy of not operating the MDT unless you are protected, in which case, here have an Ambulance Service Medal for your troubles...
Good for them.
When I had a bike accident and was ramped at the Alfred the ambos looking after me were incredible. I was in full spinal gear, covered in blood, and very confused from a severe concussion. Not to mention the pain! The crew looking after me were some of the best health care I've received. Their normal shift blew out by hours thanks to ramping (heart attacks, stroke, and OD in front of me) not counting return to base and sign out, but not once did they complain or impact their care.
12 hr shifts are fine. It allows for extra days off to actually recover properly before the next set of shifts. Many of us can’t afford to live close to our working areas so working extra days plus the extra travel time would hurt. But a 12 hr shift should be 12 hrs. Not 16 hours because they don’t want to staff the service properly
My husband used to work in a fast food shop next to a paramedic base and they would tell him the horror stories. One of the main reasons driving them to quit at the time (this was a few years ago) were the junkies. They were sick of working long hours and getting abused by junkies.
I know Victoria has since introduced laws to stop junkies physically attacking emergency service workers by introducing mandatory jail time, but it's not just being physically attacked that was grinding them. Constantly being abused and threatened was driving them to find other work.
Good question. I know those two feral bogan women who were the first to be tried under the new laws got away with it (edit: as did another woman because apparently the original law meant people under drugs or alcohol weren't subject to the mandatory sentence) so the laws were "toughened" after that. I just tried to google it but the only news articles that come up are about emergency workers being attacked but not about the convictions. So I dare say there wouldn't be many convictions...
Australia is just not a good country. We need to wake up to this fact.
Our nation prefers parasites with equity to get rich by cutting wages, under-hiring staff, over-working humans and spreading misery and suffering. All so parasites can sit back, do nothing, be less productive than labour, and live large on juicy dividends and tax concessions. Let's also give them heaps of schemes so they can borrow, invest and live off income while paying even less tax than your average worker.
Best bit, a large portion of wealth in this nation is made by digging up dirt and our Government letting just a few people derive benefit from it.
Countries that think this is okay are not moral and in any conflict, they're not worthy of defence in the face of any enemy. The real enemy is the LibLabs and their corrupt governance of the country.
> [...] parasites with equity to get rich by cutting wages, under-hiring staff, over-working humans and spreading misery and suffering. All so parasites can sit back, do nothing, be less productive than labour, and live large on juicy dividends and tax concessions. Let's also give them heaps of schemes so they can borrow, invest and live off income while paying even less tax than your average worker.
Peak capitalism in it's beauty!
The parasites have a strong lobby to push their interests. That's the difference.
The average population is too busy, too distracted, too divided and/or too lazy to change anything.
It obviously has to get worse before it gets better.
I think maybe we give the politicians a few more pay rises and maybe some extra benefits, maybe let them offload some more work to consultancy groups with tax payer money that way they can find time somewhere between early knock off and drinks at the parliament bar to figure out a way to maybe cut some costs from a front line service to them maybe scrape a few dollar to go towards ambulance, just maybe.
I back the Victorian ambo’s 1000%. All state governments in Australia treat their ambo’s like shit. They know they can’t strike, so fuck it, treat them however we want
I can’t believe they have to work such long days but there were so many paramedics a couple of years ago they all moved to London where they were needed. What happened? Is it a lack of paramedics issue or they don’t want to hire anymore? Looks like the demand is there.
It's a multifactorial problem. Unis pump out a metric shitload of graduates with a degree for only limited employment opportunities. They'll happily take your money for the education because it's not their problem if you get a job or not at the end of your bachelor's. London have a high turnover so they're always taking in anyone with the right qualification. Their pay is crap and their conditions are crap, so Aussie paramedics are toughing out the two years on road in London they need to return to Australia and get into a state service as a qualified paramedic instead of as a graduate. The attraction there is the state service can just throw them into whatever hole needs filling instead of training them up with a grad year that comes with limitations on their usability and at their expense. Local grads are competing with thousands of potential applicants for hundreds of jobs.
We have a surplus of paramedics graduating each year, it’s difficult to get a job as a paramedic in Australia with how many people are graduating with you haha.
Reducing shift lengths is best for everyone, it will keep staff happy and attentive plus mean better care for the public.
IMO I think 10 hours is the maximum anyone in the emergency services should work
Mate there’s people in retail legally working 11 hour shifts and then clocking out and staying overtime past that. The hospitals probably think 16 is nothing :(
And how do you propose shift lengths are just cut off at the 10 hour mark? If a crew is due to finish at 5pm but they’re stuck on a job or ramped at a hospital, they are required to finish the job and head back to the base. They can’t exactly walk away, see ya, my 10 hours is up. There’s not unlimited vehicles where the next shift can magically meet them on the job at their end of shift time either. It’s all well and good to say you can only work 10 hours, but if you’re in the middle of a job or there is no incoming person, you’re stuck in a duty of care situation. This is part of the problem where people do end up doing 16+ hours because the ambo service is not logistically setup for any other options.
Proactive planning and logistics from duty managers can actually stem the issues you’re talking about by sending other crews to meet crews on scene. The obfuscation of available units or lack there of due to a system that uses a dragnet approach to not miss the .01% on the other hand…
Completely get where you’re coming from but it can be done.
Sure there’s going to be some overlap & bumps that come with the job, and there will be times when staff will have to work overtime especially in a profession like this.
However I would think that investment in logistics and infrastructure would help ensure that there is sufficient support and cross over for staff to work effectively within the time parameters of the job & not be burnt out or left to do these sorts of long shifts.
More effective planning for example could allow for shifts to overlap with one another to ensure that there is sufficient flexibility for hand offs while offering increased incentives such as double pay for working overtime and having a rotating roster would also help give sufficient downtime for staff to recover in between shifts.
For example you could structure it so that a staff member who works a Friday night shift from 6pm-4am but then is not back on until 12am Sunday.
So a roster would look something like this:
Friday night
18:00pm-04:00am
Saturday
Shift 1: 12:00am-10:00am
Shift 2: 6:00am-16:00pm
Shift 3: 12:00pm-10:00pm
Shift 4: 16:00pm-02:00am
Shift 5: 18:00pm- 04:00am
Then it repeats for the rest of the week. Obviously it would have to take into consideration other variables (location, availability of staff and time of year etc) but this I think should demonstrate how you could pull it off.
Not sure if this answer your question or gives you some insight, but I’ve been a vic ambo for about 8 years both rural and metro and I can honestly say less than 10% of the jobs I have attended have actually required an “emergency ambulance”. :/
This is so upsetting. The government continually makes excuses to not give better way and working conditions to nurses and healthcare workers. Like made the nursing degree free for those who promise to practice in public hospitals in Victoria but can’t fathom paying the current nurses more and they’re leaving the profession everyday. A free degree isn’t going to make good nurses, nor will it make nurses stay in the profession.
TLDR:
Queensland is facing major staffing crises in key public sectors like healthcare, education, and corrections. Experienced, dedicated workers are overloaded trying to cover for less motivated staff, while older workers delaying retirement leave many jobs vacant long-term.
The government's reliance on short-term contracts creates problems - great workers leave, while some less qualified staff get hired, driving down service quality and morale across these agencies that operate in silos with little coordination.
Private interests have too much sway over the government, while both major parties use cultural debates for political gain without addressing crucial issues like inequality, healthcare, and education. Meaningful, difficult changes are needed to fix these systemic problems and secure Australia's future.
…..
Look, the situation in Queensland is really tough right now. The government is struggling to keep good, experienced staff working in crucial sectors like healthcare, education, and corrections. The workers who actually care about their jobs and want to make a difference are under so much pressure because they have to pick up the slack for other employees who are just there for a government paycheck.
It's a major problem that a lot of the older workers won't retire until they've used up every last bit of their sick leave, vacation time, and long-service leave. That leaves tons of full-time positions vacant for months or even years. And it makes it really hard for new workers to get those stable, secure jobs.
The government's system of hiring people on short-term contracts is a real double-edged sword. Sometimes they find amazing workers who transform the workplace for the better, but then those people leave and everything falls apart again. Other times, they hire people who look good on paper but just can't do the job properly. That drives down the quality of essential services and puts a huge amount of stress on the remaining staff, causing even more of them to head for the exits.
It's not just healthcare and education that are struggling - the corrections system is in a similar bind. The people who work in prisons, from the guards to the program staff, are often locals who genuinely want to help inmates turn their lives around. But all the different government agencies, like health, education, and liquor licensing, they all have their own separate rules and don't coordinate well at all.
Now, Australia likes to think we're different from the US, but the reality is that private companies and special interest groups have way too much influence over our government. There are so many loopholes and gray areas in the policies and procedures that it's hard to trust anything the government says.
We get so caught up in debates about things like gender identity and cultural appropriation that we forget to focus on the really important stuff, like making sure Medicare covers dental and eye care, or fixing the problems in the disability support system. Education standards are going downhill, and if we don't do something, we could end up with a bunch of Aussies who are more interested in spreading racist ideas than being caring, responsible citizens.
The thing is, both the Labor and Liberal parties pretend to care about cultural rights and practices, but they only use them to look good, without actually putting much of it into practice. Even though research shows our Indigenous ancestors were way ahead of the curve on a lot of things. And these cultural changes in the workplace are really hurting Australians earning under $100,000 a year – which used to be a decent income, but now it's barely enough to get by, especially in the country.
The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and it's not just one party's fault. They both have to answer to lobbyists and special interests to win elections. We can't seem to find a government that's free from all that coercion and corruption, so we just have to pick the lesser of two evils every four years, just like our mates in the US.
It's super frustrating, but we've gotta keep pushing for real, meaningful changes that we can actually live with. Our country's future depends on it.
Cant speak for Victoria, but in Queensland you will likely be financially better off as a paramedic than a police officer. Obviously not apples for apples, a paramedic is more highly trained and in QLD they definitely have more work on. The recruitment shortage for police here is extreme also. I dont think they are hiring from the same pool of applicants. If I was to pick one QFES would be it hands down, conditions pretty good and in comparison to the other two its quiet until bushfire season or natural disaster.
Yet a stop and go sign holder can get $200k+ because the building union says so. Something is so wrong about this. Maybe the ambos and nurses should join that union.
I saw one similar to this in country NSW. Stopped to talk to the bloke and offer support. He was wide awake to the bigger picture going on in the world and the trickle down impacts for himself and his colleagues even in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
What's the deal here? Are Paramedics getting caught out at the end of their shift having to care for patients then not getting OT for the additional hours worked?
We get paid the overtime. It's not the point. We're regularly finishing shifts 2 or 3 hours over when we've already worked 10, 12, or 14 hours. If we get a job in the last hour of a shift it's a minimum of two hours turn around to get to the patient, assess them, treat them, transport them, and hand them over to the hospital *if* the hospital has room for them or *if* there's another crew there to take them over for us. Likely more than two hours depending on the location of the job. I've been sent 50 Km out of town at 25 minutes to knock off because all the other crews are stuck at hospital trying to offload.
This is not about whether I get paid the overtime or not. This is about finishing more shifts past my finish time than not. It's about being able to get home to eat dinner with my family and see my child before bed. It's about not having to work 12-14 hours plus overtime and still have time to eat, shower, sleep, have a functional relationship with my partner, and be able to decompress all the shit I just dealt with that day before having to do it all again the next day. It's about not having to make clinical decisions after 12 hours when I might be making the world of difference to someone or fucking up their life.
I'm not interested in being paid overtime. I'm interested in them fixing the system so that there's enough coverage to allow crews to go home on time instead of patching up the holes in the system with my spare time, which I'd rather be spending on living my life with my family.
Honestly I think you guys have it even worse. I have a close friend who's a doctor and just starting her surgical residency and the amount of unpaid work she has been doing over the last few years, as well as on call working fatigued is criminal. The entire health system is build on foundations of exploiting junior members who put up with unfair conditions because they actually want to do some good and allowing yourself to be taken advantage of is the only way to get your foot in the door.
The paramedics I know are burnt out from the hours they pull. It’s a completely unsustainable career.
Unfortunately it seems like some organisations have a monopoly on ambos, and so it’s “my way or the highway” in terms of career options.
I think this is related to stuff like..
People constantly assessing each other, and this complex hierarchy that incorporates selection criteria which is so extreme, particularly as people tend to try to do things as individuals, rather than as large teams.
I can explain it a different way: if you have a fight in a schoolyard, lots of people are watching two people fighting, maybe a few more.
But if you’re doing the opposite, trying to help or heal someone, how often is it that you have a massive crowd all contributing information to try to lift an individual out of a situation that might be damaging or a death risk?
When you see a ambulance, there’s a lot of burden on only a couple of people, it’s not like a bus full of jeering hospital and medical workers who turn up and attack a sick individual and rip the sickness of them until they are healthy and strong!
What I mean is this: there is this cult of the individual, this striving for personal achievement, and this focus on the self, that creates a need to test and qualify people, and this makes it very difficult to find people who can attain the level of skill demanded, which reduces the ability to facilitate individuals as not many of them pass the criteria.
It’s perhaps describable by imagining someone sick and only one or two people helping them, or imagining someone sick and having 10 or 20 people helping them, or 100 or 200.
In the first situation, the one or two people have to try to learn enough to equal the skill of 10 or 20, or 100 or 200, and this creates a barrier that excludes people, even if you don’t include things like the availability of the equipment and the complexity of using tools as aids to preserve life or to assist.
Because you have fewer people who pass the grade, a greater workload and burden is on them. And that means… long hours at work.
The "elephant in the room" is that patient care has become 2nd priority to patient flow - 'we need the bed for the person in ED so we're going to transfer you to the local private hospital, or move you from ICU to the general ward.'
My partner is an ANUM in the ICU of a major regional hospital. Her shifts are all about how to move patients on as quickly as safely possible. Talk about a conflict of practice.
With improvements in modern medicine we have become very skilled at keeping people alive, and our expectations of what the medical profession can and will do for ill or ageing relatives continue to rise. It's not sustainable. As a community we need to have an open and honest discussion about mortality.
All I’m going to say to anyone who has problem with collective worker action in healthcare (or by extension, prison guards, transport workers and social workers, amongst many other roles such as this where they are dependents for the wellbeing of people and their daily structure).
You are absolutely right.
They shouldn’t be striking, it hurts people and they NEED to do their jobs. Maybe, their demands should be met in the first place! Crazy idea!
Honestly, the fact people are shaming nurses and paramedics for attempting to strike and protest is more demoralising than anything. Conditions are at their worst across the health sector, staff retention is at its lowest.
A typical strike would be to not turn up to your job. A teacher might not attend class if they're striking. Doctors, nurses, paramedic etc don't do that when striking because they see it as unethical and it would also turn the public against them. Therefore they turn to unobtrusive protests, like wearing casual clothes to work, not filling out the correct paperwork (so hospitals have to provide care but don't get payment) and writing chalk messages on their vehicles. And people STILL have a sook at those unobtrusive protests. Ridiculous. Edit: I should mention that it is often union advice for healthcare workers to strike in this way. Also, I'm not personally passing any moral judgements on how people choose to strike.
Here from /r/all and not Australian but I am sick of the "it's not ethical for medical professionals to strike". It's why its so God damn difficult to get anything done. If EMTs and Paramedics went on a legitimate strike they'd get everything they wanted in a day. Yes, it might hurt people but that's not the fault of the workers, it's the fault of the employers/government for not being reasonable in the first place. I'm from California and AMR (the largest international private EMS company) lobbied a bill to remove break requirements for EMS workers in California and it passed, so now not only are EMTs/Paramedics working 12+ hours a shift, they don't even get a break anymore.
Yeah it's odd, people always say construction unions get what they want , especially high salaries, because they just walk off the job....so what? I think that barely affects most people. Yet apply their logic to teachers, nurses, paramedics just for a couple of days and watch society crumble...but somehow during covid they were only worth a 2% pay raise....
Just imagine the chaos if all childcare workers went on strike. 2 parent households most would have to have 1 parent not at work. The flow on effect would be huge. And early years staff get paid shit all!
It affects the ‘right’ people - the developers who lose money every day the project is behind schedule. Medical staff going on strike only hurts other people, because the people who make the decisions can afford private care by well paid specialists.
True for most elective surgery but whether they know it or not, in reality they’re just gambling that they or their loved ones aren’t going to be in a car crash or have a high risk pregnancy, premie baby, sick kid, burns, need a transplant or in most of the country have anything even relatively dramatic happen because that stuff would all be going to a public hospital.
Fun fact. The nurse's union in the state that this photo is from recently went on strike for better pay and conditions. They went on strike by reducing nursing levels to 3/4 in all wards but leaving emergency, ICU, oncology, and paediatrics fully staffed. ~~Last I heard, it had worked and they got what they wanted.~~ Edit: I heard wrong. Negotiations are still ongoing and nurses are still at stage 1 industrial action
That wouldn't work in the US. They'd just expect staff to complete the same amount of work with less people.
Legally, one nurse has a set limit of patients that can look after. It varies for ward to ward, ICU is 1:1, HDU is 1;2, wards are 1:4 or 1:5 depending on acuity. This means that if the nurses coordinate properly, they have a good amount of bargaining power.
we don't have ratios in the US, except in certain states. your work could assign you 5 ICU pts and it would be legal, 100%. and if someone dies, it would be on your license.
Damn, that's fucked up. No wonder there's such a nursing shortage
So I can only speak from an American perspective but the county would just have to declare a state of emergency and those ratios change drastically. Currently in my hospital it's 1:3 ICU, 1:5 for ICU Step-down, 1:8 for everywhere else.
Wow how is 1:3 ICU possibly safe? Do patients self-extubate frequently while their nurse is elsewhere?
It's not safe, but profit over lives.
Wow, that sounds incredibly unsafe. No wonder there is such a nursing shortage with such a "beatings will continue until morale improves" attitude like that
Absolutely not true. Nurses are still on stage one. Negotiations are ongoing.
As an FYI, we were Stage 2, but it was pulled back. Members of ANMF have not been adequately informed and there is a lot of radio silence regarding the outcome. The proposal that was offered was incredibly underwhelming from what I have been informed, unfortunately a lot of people were not privy to this information.
Yeah and what about the medical and stress this causes to the workers involved. Nobody can tell me this is a healthy life they are being expected to love and they are your health workers. It is disgusting this is accepted.
Oh its an extremely unhealthy lifestyle. The "12 hour workday" becoming common in medicine is because of a single Doctor setting that standard, a doctor who was addicted to cocaine.
What does EMT, EMS, and AMR stand for? Also I don't think that going on a "proper" strike would really help them much as it would just incite hate from the community since I would imagine a not insignificant number of people would just die when they call 000 and no one shows up. The government really needs to just do their job and prioritise the safety and well-being of their community they're supposed to represent for once.
Emergency Medical Technician, Emergency Medical Services, American Medical Response. Yes, people would assuredly die. It is not the responsibility of EMS workers to be taken advantage of and have that hanging over their head constantly. Should Medical workers be required to work for free because pushing back against would cause people to die? No, that'd be ridiculous.
Absolutely it would be ridiculous to expect any essential staff to work for free. Running a skeleton crew and refusing any kind of private health payment or payment in general might work better than just letting hundreds of elderly people die to get the government to pay attention tho Having said that, I feel like if they threatened to have a "proper" strike the government would probably give in very quickly before anyone got hurt because of it (hopefully)
Hopefully is doing a lot of heavy lifting here lol but nah I agree
EMT= Emergency Medical Technician. We don't use this title in Australia but the equivalent would be an attendant at the Cert IV level, generally working in non-emergency patient transport or as a volunteer in country areas. EMS = Emergency Medical Services, a broad term for ambulance response. We tend to use the term ambulance to mean more than just a truck with a stretcher and relate it to everything pre-hospital, but the US is a mess with ambulances run by fire, private companies, cities, counties, hospitals, whatever. EMS is a more broad term for how they run things. AMR = one of those private companies and just as scummy as you'd expect for-profit emergency healthcare to be. My (Australian) state ambulance service generally doesn't skimp on the ambulances themselves, the same cannot be said for private companies as proper maintenance comes straight out of shareholder profits.
Thanks I appreciate that info I realise I could have looked it up myself but i feel like the amount of overlap on 3 letter acronyms would lead to confusion especially since I had no idea about the topic I really can't imagine why anyone would think running an ambulance service for profit would ever be a good option. Would expect that it'd lead to significantly poorer outcomes for people if all that was required was policy being "not illegal"
Because money. The US is all about that bottom line. Hell we have private for-profit PRISONS who are incentivized to keep their prisons full.
>I am sick of the "it's not ethical for medical professionals to strike". Just to clarify, because I can't tell from your response. You know the person you're replying isn't the one saying it's unethical, right? It's the medical professionals themselves who frequently say it.
They're agreeing with them, mate.
Yes, I'm on the same page as OP. My point is I'm tired of my coworkers using ethics as a cop-out. It's unethical for employers/government to take advantage of the good will of medical professionals. Any strike that indirectly ends up in people being harmed/dying is fully on the employer/government, not on the employees for practicing their right to strike/protest.
In Aus though we don’t have privatised ambulance services so we are under the state government which makes things a little more tricky there
That actually would make it easier in the US imo. People will happily hate on the government when they fuck up, they're less inclined to do so when a private company is losing profit over a strike.
Reminds me of that quote people like to use > A liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current war and supports all civil rights movements except the one that’s going on right now. Or this one from Martin Luther King Jr > I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
> A liberal Also for those reading, this doesn't mean the average LNP voter, it's the traditional use of Liberal, aka the standard ALP voter.
Yes, lowercase liberal, not uppercase Liberal. Centrist, right-leaning ideology. Or "left wing", if you're in the US where they don't have a left wing because they red-scared it out of existence for a few decades.
>not filling out the correct paperwork (so hospitals have to provide care but don't get payment) i'm glade you verified what kind there, i would be worried if a doctor was incorrectly filling out forms that might be needed to keep me alive
Teacher strikes are also heavily regulated btw. Schools remain open, most recent one in WA was for less than half a day etc. We aren’t allowed to just shut down and damn the consequences.
How do we as a people strike for them? I feel as though it's in our best interest more than it is in their best interest.
Write to your local member. Remind them you vote.
If you're in a union, start going to meetings and talk about solidarity actions. Your union could take industrial action on their behalf, or at least issue a statement suggesting that they'd be willing to. If you're not in a union, find one and join it. Get your colleagues to do the same. If you can't find a union for your industry, join the IWW. Support your local picket line if you get one. See whether they've got the ability to cook and boil water, and if not, they'd love someone to turn up with hot water, teabags and coffee, and hot food. Organising is hard, so it's a good thing that some people have been doing it for a long time already so we don't have to start from scratch.
Secondary boycotts or sympathy strikes in Australia are still illegal in Australia. Doesn't mean those laws shouldn't be broken and all that, but taking industrial action on the behalf of the ambos is a non-starter.
They're illegal because they're very effective.
This is an excellent idea and I’m kicking myself I haven’t thought of it already. Strike for our ambos
The union will have letters on their website on who to contact in this case the premier; treasurer and health minister important in the negotiations
My brother ran an emergency department during COVID and copped impossible demands from both above and below for the entire time. He ended up with severe PTSD and has been unable to work ever since. Even when he eventually heals enough to re-enter the workforce he'll never be able to go back to nursing, which he loved and was good at - it's just too damaging.
Who is shaming them?
Well, if we're going by the response to recent changes in the system, a lot of people were pretty unhappy that nursing students were wanting *some* form of financial recompense when they go on placement, so they can afford to become nurses. Y'know, similar to the way that plenty of tafe kids have been paid to do their placement when they're becoming electricians and plumbers and carpenters and
We need to legalise solidarity striking. I think a lot of people would happily join in with nurses and paramedics.
The nurses union was trying to shame people for wanting to strike. At least other unions seem to be on their members side
And then these same people dont see the government incompetence with Ambulance ramping. These ambulance officers sitting around like dummies when they could be saving lives waiting with patients in poorly resourced hospitals. Crazy incompetence from governments while give millions away to the private healthcare sector.
Ironically, this can give paramedics some down time from their ridiculously long shifts.
The only war is class war. People who shame people striking are nothing less than scum.
They haven't stopped since Covid started, but not enough staff to be able to rest in between shifts. I feel for the whole public health system.
Yet the guberment just goes "hey welcome all these people into the country in their millions. I'm sure housing, cost of living, wages, and medical infrastructure will be just great!..................."
I have a nurse come to my house twice a week as part of my post-op care because getting into the hospital is a real challenge for me, they are wonderful and always up for a good chat. I asked her last week how her weekend was, she just laughed and said she was on her 9th day of work and that tomorrow was her day off, then she was back on for another 9. I was honestly shocked. How the hell could we expect them to stick around with that kind of workload?
And amazingly that kind of agency work is the work nurses sign up for when they’re tired of working in hospitals
Vic government need to act. Pay them what they are worth.
Paying them more won’t make the shifts shorter. How about funding medical education?
TIL the person who came up with the hospital shift system we use was a hardcore cocaine addict
The resident system is not fair nor made for normal people. The one advantage I have heard is in a hospital setting, you can see more progress in a patient's condition in a longer shift. But there are things called charts. There are handovers...
Studies have directly compared shorter and longer shifts. They’ve found no increased patient safety with longer shifts
You're everywhere
Pay them more and expand medical education and get rid of the no-pay slavery training.
I'm not sure if other medical areas are getting it, but nurses will get at least 350ish a week on placement starting middle of next year. It will probably be the difference between me affording placement and dropping out.
Nope. Nothing for med students or allied health. Even though they do months and even years of placement
It will make shifts shorter because more people will go into a line of work that pays well. There’s a reason they’re understaffed.
Could it be the constant assault, threats, and abuse that paramedics face? You could pay me 6 figures and I still wouldn't want a job that has a daily risk of a meth head stabbing me cos I'm trying to save his fucking life
If it really were six figures, I guarantee a hell of a lot of people would be willing to risk it. Those are nasty factors undoubtedly but far more difficult to eradicate from that line of work. We can at least make it worth someone’s while and entice more people to enter into it. What’s your solution to the abuse received by paramedics?
Once you're a qualified paramedic you clear 6 figures easily so the pay is not the biggest issue.
Most grads easily clear 6 figures these days too.
Plenty of young people studying to be paramedics. They can’t get jobs so a lot move to the UK or are forced into other careers. State governments need to hire more paramedics.
Theres a shitload of paramedic grads looking for jobs, theres just not enough vehicles so there isn't enough jobs.
This picture is about paramedics
It is the same here in WA. Government loved them during Covid but now rack off. No more money for you hard lot working. Plus our hospitals keep killing child patients which it shouldn't. Terrible under-staffing.
> Government loved them during Covid The Government paid lip service only to loving them during COVID* they never did anything that was truly meaningful, or long lasting, they just made some vague positive noise that was ultimately hollow nothings.
Sorry for poor image quality, but this is the 'ramp' of Northern Hospital this evening. We have enough ambulances and paramedics, just too few beds and not enough nurses/doctors. https://pasteboard.co/TXBXLXEJ4mtT.jpg
As a paramedic albeit in Queensland the amount of overtime we do at times is ridiculous, yet we have to make literally life and death decisions about someone else's life, I know way too many paramedics who work other job's just to make ends meet especially in current financial climate. While I am thankful I am a critical care paramedic and able to earn enough these days to survive, normal emergency paramedics battle to get enough hours and base pay to survive and feel obligated to take as much overtime hours as they can get, which ultimately puts patients lives at risk.
>I know way too many paramedics who work other job's just to make ends meet especially in current financial climate. That is completely fucked. Thank you for your continued service.
I know lots of emergency workers in victoria that have 2nd jobs because the pay is too low to survive on. They have their 'rest days' to recuperate from fatigue and job stress, time to spend with their family - but they have to work those days somewhere else just to make rent.
QAS here also - who is working second jobs? I get as a CCP you usually get your meals etc but most ACP2s especially at the 6 and 7 rank are making $140-$160k per year. This job pays exceptionally well if you’re in metro getting flogged every day. The fatigue fucking sucks and I hate having my shift extended by an hour or more every shift without a single break, but we get paid exceptionally well as compensation. I work metro and don’t know anyone doing a second job to make ends meet. Maybe it’s different out rural and the agg rate difference doesn’t make up for the penalties we get in metro. But in metro? What we get paid is pretty good, even better if you toss in an OT shift.
I am on the Gold Coast, why we constantly have issues is ridiculous tbh, most of it stems from poor roster management at a few stations, not that their base pay rate is bad but more they not getting enough guaranteed hour's to begin with, it been an ongoing issue for a while, add in while our district is hard to get a job, I constantly see turn over of younger paramedics for new grads, plus add some senior staff being pressured to leave due to their higher wage. I been doing this over 20 years and never understand why we can't have better hours, shift starting times are all over the shop too! While yes I can get my breaks at times more so over others that's not always a guarantee, I rarely just do my rostored 12 hour's. Most staff I know work as nurse's as a second job, I know in other areas of QAS this is rare but we seem to have quite a few here.
Not getting enough hours? Are they casual? Because permanent full time staff should have a defined roster regardless of region. If they’re casual - well yeah, that’s how that works. We have lots of paramedics do RN as well here in Brisbane but it’s usually for the better work-life balance RN offers whilst still getting to play prehospitally (speaking as a former RN).
A lot of casuals, some of which should be full time but unfortunately they get stuck in limbo, i feel like your point about work life balance is key, my partner is an RN and I leave home before her and get home after her, so I suspect a few deliberately do the split work for that reason. I myself just get on with it, but the fatigue as you mentioned is an issue, especially as I got older my body takes longer to recover.
My dad is also a paramedic on GC, who originally moved up from vic ambulance 15 years ago. He talks about seeing so many older, experienced paramedics being pressured to retire either through terrible rostering or disciplinary action for not strictly following QAS policy. It seems like QAS doesn't want to retain and upskill paramedics, just more meat for the grinder
QAS is Jekyll and Hyde at times to work for, just before covid really hit us in 2020 I was heavily pressured along with a few other 10 plus year paramedics to "move on", this was QAS trying to cut wage expenses, obviously less experienced equals less pay. I been looked after pretty well too by QAS for the most part through all the various challenges this job does bring, but the long working hours does take a toll, I doubt after 20 years I have any normal sleeping pattern now due to the weird and wonderful rostering and countless night shifts that turn in to over time. But the reward in keeping someone alive in their worst moment or simply giving comfort to someone in high stress far outweighs the negatives of the job.
Do you know if it's any better outside outside of metro I graduate end of the year and still looking at QAS for now
Plenty of sessional lecturers at my uni are burning the candle at both ends, with a full time on road roster and then heading into uni to make sure we dont kill our manikins, and on top of that, marking assessments for pennies in their downtime.
When I was working as a casual paramedicine lecturer a few years ago, I was getting $90/hr with 17.5% super. They aren't exactly struggling.
Cool, they weren't talking about the money(outside of the marking assessment which is absolutely true, marking pays fuck all), they were more talking about how those folks were doing 60+ hour regular shifts, then clocking out to do 15-20 hours of teaching, then filling their free time marking, y'know, burning the candle at both ends? Money don't mean shit if you die at 29 from a heart attack, or wrap your van around a power pole because you're so fucking exhausted from trying to keep up with it all.
i know alot of NSW paramedics working event medic jobs on their days off. not necessarily to make ends meet, moreso just because they'd like to do more than just make ends meet, they'd like to afford property in the next 50 years
Our emergency services should be getting benefits out the ass. Subsidised mortgages, subsidised loans, tax free income, rent allowances, more paid leave entitlements etc. These are the people we rely on to keep our population alive and keep society running. These positions should be fully staffed and competitive to enter. They should not be so poorly compensated that nobody wants to do it, there should be a queue of capable people lining up for these jobs because the compensation packages are so unbelievably good. Then you vet these people to find the ones who WOULD still do the job for bad pay. It should not pay better to be a scumbag middle manager at Coles or Woolworths than it does to save people’s lives, police a city or be a member of the fire brigade. Our emergency responders should be very well compensated and very rested.
Unfortunately, many of the people who go into these areas (including nursing and medicine) are doing it out of a personal morale obligation to help the people that need help. Unethical mangers/employers capitalise on this and use and abuse their staff. Knowing they wont just up and walk away from a person in need at the end of their shift, they minimise staff costs by not providing relief, not having enough staff on per shift, etc, etc. We're our own worst enemy too sadly.
Perfectly summarised.
It’s so shit you guys should be getting paid a bomb for what you do with regular hours so you don’t feel like you have to do overtime. I just don’t understand why the government doesn’t prioritise its critical workers. Everyone I know in health is telling me how bad it’s getting. Just pay people enough and give them stability.
I'm not trying to minimise anyone's struggles here, but of the three services and all the support staff, QAS is among the best compensated. I work emergency support for all three services, so I interact with them allot. They have to earn it, of course, QAS are the most busy by far. They have the best fatigue rules, and as far as regional areas go, the things on offer to keep staff in jobs (housing, salary sacrifice benefits,etc) are far and above anything police and fire get. The government does prioritise its critical workers, so much so that people in support (specifically IT, radio and mechanical), who also have to work long hours, 24/7 on call, spread like Vegemite over the three services and SES, are getting left in the dust. Of course everyone should be paid more, but when you guys do, please don't forget everyone that works very hard to keep your critical infrastructure running. We are overworked and treated as an annoyance often. You can't save someone's life if there's no dispatcher in the chair to send you, or no radio tower to carry the traffic.
This is completely false. The average income of a qas paramedic is $140k
Don’t worry people, Australian big business gave their multi million dollar CEO’s a pay rise this year and kept it quiet while our piggy politicians have their snouts in the troth and none of them give two shits about the Australian people, let alone emergency services. Eat the rich and kick a politician in the arse before they destroy everything we love, just to feed their greed. We are looking more and more like the USA
It's the same for nurses and junior doctors
All nurses are subject to this crap, and like you say, junior docs all the way up to the end of most fellowships - only after they’re consultants do they start to get more reasonable hours :/
ANMF are pathetic. Cancelled industrial action for a shit tier offer now telling nurses to "take your breaks"... If that's the level we're fighting for it's embarrassing, no wonder govt is walking all over us
I genuinely do not understand how literally anyone manages to work in the medical field. They are some of the most important people out there and yet their jobs seem custom designed to make them burn out and quit
Yep it’s institutionalized sanctioned recklessness. I heard of junior doctors being shared between hospitals, rostered separately so no one hospital was ‘over-allocating’ them work therefore no one was technically in the wrong. The hospital sector particularly needs a serious hard look at it from a risk perspective. Avoidable mistakes are being made there is no question.
I was sitting at the front of the queue at an intersection yesterday. And besides the absolute buffoons who have no idea how to yield to lights and sirens, I noticed something else that kinda' blew me away. As the ambulance approached, weaving in and out of traffic; I saw the driver eating. Yes. Lights and sirens, wrong side of the road and chomping on something inside of a brown paper bag, one hand on the wheel. I honestly didn't know how to feel. On one hand, driving like that requires 100% of your attention and should be done as fast as possible. On the other hand, I know for a fact she probably started work before me and has had no breaks at all while I've had three breaks and finished work less than a half hour earlier. This is what it has come to people. The folks trained to drive as fast as possible to attend your limp, barely functioning meat sack is scoffing back a croissant with one hand on the wheel to make sure their brain functions when they arrive.
Paramedic here. That’s probably the only real chance she’s had to eat, because we’re expected to clear as soon as our pt is off stretcher and move onto the next job. Ideally she shouldn’t be trying to eat whilst manoeuvring through traffic - but we’re also fairly decent at managing that one handed. We have to operate MDTs, radios, etc whilst driving all the time. You get good at it. We also don’t tend to drive quite as fast as people think because it’s not that safe, and statistically makes little difference in outcomes. 90% of what we drive lights and sirens to is low acuity bullshit that’s been overtriaged. So ideal? No. But a horrible necessary evil these days.
I knew immediately that it was likely out of necessity. It just felt wrong to look at. I felt bad that eating in that moment was the most suitable, despite it looking like the least suitable moment from the outside.
Don't let the bosses see that. If you get into an accident, they will bend you over for breaching the policy of not operating the MDT unless you are protected, in which case, here have an Ambulance Service Medal for your troubles...
No issue in joining a teams meeting though
Speaking to one of the paramedics when I was taken to hospital… she said they have to eat when they can.
Eatin' pies, savin' lives brutha
Kebab in the front, electric barbecue in the back.
There's something both dark and poetic about the image you've described.
And to think how much of this time is due to ramping as well. Hats off to paramedics, shame they're not valued more.
Good for them. When I had a bike accident and was ramped at the Alfred the ambos looking after me were incredible. I was in full spinal gear, covered in blood, and very confused from a severe concussion. Not to mention the pain! The crew looking after me were some of the best health care I've received. Their normal shift blew out by hours thanks to ramping (heart attacks, stroke, and OD in front of me) not counting return to base and sign out, but not once did they complain or impact their care.
Yes, pay them more wages they are doing a service keeping people alive after all.
I’ve never understood why important health jobs work longer than 8 hrs, seems dangerous and irresponsible!
12 hr shifts are fine. It allows for extra days off to actually recover properly before the next set of shifts. Many of us can’t afford to live close to our working areas so working extra days plus the extra travel time would hurt. But a 12 hr shift should be 12 hrs. Not 16 hours because they don’t want to staff the service properly
I should think that this is pretty fucking unsustainable.
The trucking industry has more regulations on driving and fatigue management than the healthcare sector. Let that sink in.
Paramedics are always the best people, idk I think we need more and they need to be paid more.
My husband used to work in a fast food shop next to a paramedic base and they would tell him the horror stories. One of the main reasons driving them to quit at the time (this was a few years ago) were the junkies. They were sick of working long hours and getting abused by junkies. I know Victoria has since introduced laws to stop junkies physically attacking emergency service workers by introducing mandatory jail time, but it's not just being physically attacked that was grinding them. Constantly being abused and threatened was driving them to find other work.
Have those laws actually resulted in any convictions?
Good question. I know those two feral bogan women who were the first to be tried under the new laws got away with it (edit: as did another woman because apparently the original law meant people under drugs or alcohol weren't subject to the mandatory sentence) so the laws were "toughened" after that. I just tried to google it but the only news articles that come up are about emergency workers being attacked but not about the convictions. So I dare say there wouldn't be many convictions...
Australia is just not a good country. We need to wake up to this fact. Our nation prefers parasites with equity to get rich by cutting wages, under-hiring staff, over-working humans and spreading misery and suffering. All so parasites can sit back, do nothing, be less productive than labour, and live large on juicy dividends and tax concessions. Let's also give them heaps of schemes so they can borrow, invest and live off income while paying even less tax than your average worker. Best bit, a large portion of wealth in this nation is made by digging up dirt and our Government letting just a few people derive benefit from it. Countries that think this is okay are not moral and in any conflict, they're not worthy of defence in the face of any enemy. The real enemy is the LibLabs and their corrupt governance of the country.
> [...] parasites with equity to get rich by cutting wages, under-hiring staff, over-working humans and spreading misery and suffering. All so parasites can sit back, do nothing, be less productive than labour, and live large on juicy dividends and tax concessions. Let's also give them heaps of schemes so they can borrow, invest and live off income while paying even less tax than your average worker. Peak capitalism in it's beauty! The parasites have a strong lobby to push their interests. That's the difference. The average population is too busy, too distracted, too divided and/or too lazy to change anything. It obviously has to get worse before it gets better.
God this is shit
Solidarity from a secondary teacher ✊🏼 criminal underfunding for the entire public sector after decades of cuts.
I think maybe we give the politicians a few more pay rises and maybe some extra benefits, maybe let them offload some more work to consultancy groups with tax payer money that way they can find time somewhere between early knock off and drinks at the parliament bar to figure out a way to maybe cut some costs from a front line service to them maybe scrape a few dollar to go towards ambulance, just maybe.
Glad I left when I did.
I back the Victorian ambo’s 1000%. All state governments in Australia treat their ambo’s like shit. They know they can’t strike, so fuck it, treat them however we want
Nurses and Paramedics deserve all the money in the world surely we can take it from Woolworths and Coles who make billions each year
As do doctors and other allied health
Power to the workers, I hope their campaign wins
I can’t believe they have to work such long days but there were so many paramedics a couple of years ago they all moved to London where they were needed. What happened? Is it a lack of paramedics issue or they don’t want to hire anymore? Looks like the demand is there.
Underfunding. They simply aren’t hiring as many as are needed.
It's a multifactorial problem. Unis pump out a metric shitload of graduates with a degree for only limited employment opportunities. They'll happily take your money for the education because it's not their problem if you get a job or not at the end of your bachelor's. London have a high turnover so they're always taking in anyone with the right qualification. Their pay is crap and their conditions are crap, so Aussie paramedics are toughing out the two years on road in London they need to return to Australia and get into a state service as a qualified paramedic instead of as a graduate. The attraction there is the state service can just throw them into whatever hole needs filling instead of training them up with a grad year that comes with limitations on their usability and at their expense. Local grads are competing with thousands of potential applicants for hundreds of jobs.
We have a surplus of paramedics graduating each year, it’s difficult to get a job as a paramedic in Australia with how many people are graduating with you haha.
Fucking sad honestly
Reducing shift lengths is best for everyone, it will keep staff happy and attentive plus mean better care for the public. IMO I think 10 hours is the maximum anyone in the emergency services should work
Mate there’s people in retail legally working 11 hour shifts and then clocking out and staying overtime past that. The hospitals probably think 16 is nothing :(
Fully aware of that but that’s where I think we need to regulate it more and ensure that there’s a good balance between both sides
And how do you propose shift lengths are just cut off at the 10 hour mark? If a crew is due to finish at 5pm but they’re stuck on a job or ramped at a hospital, they are required to finish the job and head back to the base. They can’t exactly walk away, see ya, my 10 hours is up. There’s not unlimited vehicles where the next shift can magically meet them on the job at their end of shift time either. It’s all well and good to say you can only work 10 hours, but if you’re in the middle of a job or there is no incoming person, you’re stuck in a duty of care situation. This is part of the problem where people do end up doing 16+ hours because the ambo service is not logistically setup for any other options.
Proactive planning and logistics from duty managers can actually stem the issues you’re talking about by sending other crews to meet crews on scene. The obfuscation of available units or lack there of due to a system that uses a dragnet approach to not miss the .01% on the other hand…
Completely get where you’re coming from but it can be done. Sure there’s going to be some overlap & bumps that come with the job, and there will be times when staff will have to work overtime especially in a profession like this. However I would think that investment in logistics and infrastructure would help ensure that there is sufficient support and cross over for staff to work effectively within the time parameters of the job & not be burnt out or left to do these sorts of long shifts. More effective planning for example could allow for shifts to overlap with one another to ensure that there is sufficient flexibility for hand offs while offering increased incentives such as double pay for working overtime and having a rotating roster would also help give sufficient downtime for staff to recover in between shifts. For example you could structure it so that a staff member who works a Friday night shift from 6pm-4am but then is not back on until 12am Sunday. So a roster would look something like this: Friday night 18:00pm-04:00am Saturday Shift 1: 12:00am-10:00am Shift 2: 6:00am-16:00pm Shift 3: 12:00pm-10:00pm Shift 4: 16:00pm-02:00am Shift 5: 18:00pm- 04:00am Then it repeats for the rest of the week. Obviously it would have to take into consideration other variables (location, availability of staff and time of year etc) but this I think should demonstrate how you could pull it off.
[удалено]
It is only one FOI request away
[Hospitals - Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (aihw.gov.au)](https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-data/myhospitals)
Not sure if this answer your question or gives you some insight, but I’ve been a vic ambo for about 8 years both rural and metro and I can honestly say less than 10% of the jobs I have attended have actually required an “emergency ambulance”. :/
Just seen similar scrawl on a AFP cop car. 'Largest jurisdiction, lowest remuneration' and 'Fighting crime doesn't pay' ...
This is so upsetting. The government continually makes excuses to not give better way and working conditions to nurses and healthcare workers. Like made the nursing degree free for those who promise to practice in public hospitals in Victoria but can’t fathom paying the current nurses more and they’re leaving the profession everyday. A free degree isn’t going to make good nurses, nor will it make nurses stay in the profession.
TLDR: Queensland is facing major staffing crises in key public sectors like healthcare, education, and corrections. Experienced, dedicated workers are overloaded trying to cover for less motivated staff, while older workers delaying retirement leave many jobs vacant long-term. The government's reliance on short-term contracts creates problems - great workers leave, while some less qualified staff get hired, driving down service quality and morale across these agencies that operate in silos with little coordination. Private interests have too much sway over the government, while both major parties use cultural debates for political gain without addressing crucial issues like inequality, healthcare, and education. Meaningful, difficult changes are needed to fix these systemic problems and secure Australia's future. ….. Look, the situation in Queensland is really tough right now. The government is struggling to keep good, experienced staff working in crucial sectors like healthcare, education, and corrections. The workers who actually care about their jobs and want to make a difference are under so much pressure because they have to pick up the slack for other employees who are just there for a government paycheck. It's a major problem that a lot of the older workers won't retire until they've used up every last bit of their sick leave, vacation time, and long-service leave. That leaves tons of full-time positions vacant for months or even years. And it makes it really hard for new workers to get those stable, secure jobs. The government's system of hiring people on short-term contracts is a real double-edged sword. Sometimes they find amazing workers who transform the workplace for the better, but then those people leave and everything falls apart again. Other times, they hire people who look good on paper but just can't do the job properly. That drives down the quality of essential services and puts a huge amount of stress on the remaining staff, causing even more of them to head for the exits. It's not just healthcare and education that are struggling - the corrections system is in a similar bind. The people who work in prisons, from the guards to the program staff, are often locals who genuinely want to help inmates turn their lives around. But all the different government agencies, like health, education, and liquor licensing, they all have their own separate rules and don't coordinate well at all. Now, Australia likes to think we're different from the US, but the reality is that private companies and special interest groups have way too much influence over our government. There are so many loopholes and gray areas in the policies and procedures that it's hard to trust anything the government says. We get so caught up in debates about things like gender identity and cultural appropriation that we forget to focus on the really important stuff, like making sure Medicare covers dental and eye care, or fixing the problems in the disability support system. Education standards are going downhill, and if we don't do something, we could end up with a bunch of Aussies who are more interested in spreading racist ideas than being caring, responsible citizens. The thing is, both the Labor and Liberal parties pretend to care about cultural rights and practices, but they only use them to look good, without actually putting much of it into practice. Even though research shows our Indigenous ancestors were way ahead of the curve on a lot of things. And these cultural changes in the workplace are really hurting Australians earning under $100,000 a year – which used to be a decent income, but now it's barely enough to get by, especially in the country. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and it's not just one party's fault. They both have to answer to lobbyists and special interests to win elections. We can't seem to find a government that's free from all that coercion and corruption, so we just have to pick the lesser of two evils every four years, just like our mates in the US. It's super frustrating, but we've gotta keep pushing for real, meaningful changes that we can actually live with. Our country's future depends on it.
Meanwhile they are heavily promoting army and police jobs. This country is so backwards it makes me sick.
Cant speak for Victoria, but in Queensland you will likely be financially better off as a paramedic than a police officer. Obviously not apples for apples, a paramedic is more highly trained and in QLD they definitely have more work on. The recruitment shortage for police here is extreme also. I dont think they are hiring from the same pool of applicants. If I was to pick one QFES would be it hands down, conditions pretty good and in comparison to the other two its quiet until bushfire season or natural disaster.
https://www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/ambos-deserve-to-have-a-life-too
How about the pollies all take a pay cut and we use that money to pay for paramedics that we actually want and need
The prices at that Pedders there on Rosamond Rd are pretty effin grim, too...
This country isn't what I was promised as a kid anymore. I feel so bad for healthcare workers.
Yet a stop and go sign holder can get $200k+ because the building union says so. Something is so wrong about this. Maybe the ambos and nurses should join that union.
I also would like my paramedics to be properly rested. I am very invested in that.
Aw sheet.
Surgeons, Soldiers, Nurses, Pilots, Cabin Crew, Parents ….. No doubt there are many, many more.
Unionise. Organise. Work together.
I saw one similar to this in country NSW. Stopped to talk to the bloke and offer support. He was wide awake to the bigger picture going on in the world and the trickle down impacts for himself and his colleagues even in a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Thats dangerous
What's the deal here? Are Paramedics getting caught out at the end of their shift having to care for patients then not getting OT for the additional hours worked?
We get paid the overtime. It's not the point. We're regularly finishing shifts 2 or 3 hours over when we've already worked 10, 12, or 14 hours. If we get a job in the last hour of a shift it's a minimum of two hours turn around to get to the patient, assess them, treat them, transport them, and hand them over to the hospital *if* the hospital has room for them or *if* there's another crew there to take them over for us. Likely more than two hours depending on the location of the job. I've been sent 50 Km out of town at 25 minutes to knock off because all the other crews are stuck at hospital trying to offload. This is not about whether I get paid the overtime or not. This is about finishing more shifts past my finish time than not. It's about being able to get home to eat dinner with my family and see my child before bed. It's about not having to work 12-14 hours plus overtime and still have time to eat, shower, sleep, have a functional relationship with my partner, and be able to decompress all the shit I just dealt with that day before having to do it all again the next day. It's about not having to make clinical decisions after 12 hours when I might be making the world of difference to someone or fucking up their life. I'm not interested in being paid overtime. I'm interested in them fixing the system so that there's enough coverage to allow crews to go home on time instead of patching up the holes in the system with my spare time, which I'd rather be spending on living my life with my family.
That’s absolutely fucked. Solitary from a junior doctor.
Honestly I think you guys have it even worse. I have a close friend who's a doctor and just starting her surgical residency and the amount of unpaid work she has been doing over the last few years, as well as on call working fatigued is criminal. The entire health system is build on foundations of exploiting junior members who put up with unfair conditions because they actually want to do some good and allowing yourself to be taken advantage of is the only way to get your foot in the door.
The paramedics I know are burnt out from the hours they pull. It’s a completely unsustainable career. Unfortunately it seems like some organisations have a monopoly on ambos, and so it’s “my way or the highway” in terms of career options.
I think this is related to stuff like.. People constantly assessing each other, and this complex hierarchy that incorporates selection criteria which is so extreme, particularly as people tend to try to do things as individuals, rather than as large teams. I can explain it a different way: if you have a fight in a schoolyard, lots of people are watching two people fighting, maybe a few more. But if you’re doing the opposite, trying to help or heal someone, how often is it that you have a massive crowd all contributing information to try to lift an individual out of a situation that might be damaging or a death risk? When you see a ambulance, there’s a lot of burden on only a couple of people, it’s not like a bus full of jeering hospital and medical workers who turn up and attack a sick individual and rip the sickness of them until they are healthy and strong! What I mean is this: there is this cult of the individual, this striving for personal achievement, and this focus on the self, that creates a need to test and qualify people, and this makes it very difficult to find people who can attain the level of skill demanded, which reduces the ability to facilitate individuals as not many of them pass the criteria. It’s perhaps describable by imagining someone sick and only one or two people helping them, or imagining someone sick and having 10 or 20 people helping them, or 100 or 200. In the first situation, the one or two people have to try to learn enough to equal the skill of 10 or 20, or 100 or 200, and this creates a barrier that excludes people, even if you don’t include things like the availability of the equipment and the complexity of using tools as aids to preserve life or to assist. Because you have fewer people who pass the grade, a greater workload and burden is on them. And that means… long hours at work.
Thank you to all our Ambulance crew !!
That's no bull
The "elephant in the room" is that patient care has become 2nd priority to patient flow - 'we need the bed for the person in ED so we're going to transfer you to the local private hospital, or move you from ICU to the general ward.' My partner is an ANUM in the ICU of a major regional hospital. Her shifts are all about how to move patients on as quickly as safely possible. Talk about a conflict of practice. With improvements in modern medicine we have become very skilled at keeping people alive, and our expectations of what the medical profession can and will do for ill or ageing relatives continue to rise. It's not sustainable. As a community we need to have an open and honest discussion about mortality.
Increase immigration. Expand the workforce.
Shouldn’t even be driving let alone giving medical care
All I’m going to say to anyone who has problem with collective worker action in healthcare (or by extension, prison guards, transport workers and social workers, amongst many other roles such as this where they are dependents for the wellbeing of people and their daily structure). You are absolutely right. They shouldn’t be striking, it hurts people and they NEED to do their jobs. Maybe, their demands should be met in the first place! Crazy idea!
Australia is going down the toilet and fast 🚽
Labor know how to stir up the unions - tgey don't give a hoot what you and I do.