Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
My service lacks proper funding. There are not enough ambulances, and I am paid less than £20,000 a year to make decisions that could save your life.
Understand this: I, or a colleague, will put a tube down your throat to breathe for you. I will make decisions that mean the difference between life and death for you. This will happen in your bedroom, in the street, your workplace, at hospital or in the back of an ambulance. It happens every time my dispatcher passes me another 999 call.
I was paid £18,500 a year when I started making these decisions. Several years on, I still earn less than £20,000.
The media focuses on hospital waiting times and the plight of nurses and junior doctors. Yet so often, the first contact a patient has with the NHS – and sometimes the last – is with ambulance crews.
These crews are exhausted. We work 10 hours a day, often without a break. I’m told there are committees looking into this, that further recruitment has been made, but nothing has changed. We are not infallible. We get tired and mistakes can happen; mistakes have happened.
http://www.theguardian.com/public-l...nce-service-crew-restart-your-heart-exhausted
Understand this: I, or a colleague, will put a tube down your throat to breathe for you. I will make decisions that mean the difference between life and death for you. This will happen in your bedroom, in the street, your workplace, at hospital or in the back of an ambulance. It happens every time my dispatcher passes me another 999 call.
I was paid £18,500 a year when I started making these decisions. Several years on, I still earn less than £20,000.
The media focuses on hospital waiting times and the plight of nurses and junior doctors. Yet so often, the first contact a patient has with the NHS – and sometimes the last – is with ambulance crews.
These crews are exhausted. We work 10 hours a day, often without a break. I’m told there are committees looking into this, that further recruitment has been made, but nothing has changed. We are not infallible. We get tired and mistakes can happen; mistakes have happened.
http://www.theguardian.com/public-l...nce-service-crew-restart-your-heart-exhausted
