Heather du Plessis-Allan: St John's ambulance service is so broken

Look, I have got the point where I personally think St John ambulance service is so broken that I'm not sure I would rely on it in an emergency anymore.

Today, the union representing the ambulance workers has announced it’s launching industrial action - indefinitely.

It says St John first said there was no money for pay increases - then did make a pay increase offer, but it wasn't good enough. So the union said no and counter-offered, and every time they've counter-offered, they say St John just refuses to address it.

So as a result, they will still be doing be doing code purple and red call outs, which is cardiac arrest and life threatening stuff. But they are not committing to doing anything else indefinitely.

So basically, until they get a decent pay offer. This could go on for a year, they said.

Can you imagine how much worse this is going to make St John? Because it’s already not flash.

There's a story in the papers today of a 72-year-old guy who called St John to say he was having a heart attack. He knew he was having a heart attack, cause he’d had two before. And they said the ambulance would be an hour or two away because he actually just had a chest infection.

There was also a story just a couple of weeks ago of a 17-year-old girl who died of asthma. Asthma! It's a completely treatable situation, and she died because the operator coded it wrong and sent the ambo crew on a break instead of in to save her life.

Something's wrong here. Part of it is funding, part of it is that we can’t run a life-saving service partly on donations - but it's bigger than that.

Because if you’ve got people incorrectly coding events - quite often - is funding going to fix that?

Anyway, I've got to the point where I've made an alterative plan for if we've got an emergency in the house, I've got a plan for how I'm going to get people to the hospital myself.

Because I don’t think I can rely on St John - and I wonder how many other people have got to that point too.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I have got to the point I reckon where I
personally think s John ambulance service is so broken I'm
not sure I would rely on in an emergency anymore. Today,
the union that represents the ambo workers has announced that
it's launching industrial action indefinitely. So it says what's happened
in the pay negotiations as pay negotiations is that at

(00:21):
first Sint John said there was no money for pay increases.
Then they did stump up some money and they did
make a pay increase offer, but it wasn't like, not
anywhere near good enough. So the union said no and
counted offered, but counteroffered. But every time they counteroffer, they reckon,
Saint John just refuses to even address it. And so
as a result, they are now going to still be
doing the Code purple and cold Code red callouts, which

(00:41):
is like cardiac arrest and life threatening stuff, but they
are not committing to doing anything else if you hurt
yourself indefinitely, and by indefinitely they basically mean like until
they get a decent payoffer. This could go on for
a year. They said, Now, can you imagine how much
worse this is going to make the Saint John's AMBO service,
because it's already enough. I mean, there's a story in
the papers today of a seventy two year old guy

(01:03):
who called Saint John to say he was having a
heart attack, and he knew he was having a heart
attack because he'd already had two heart attacks before, and
the AMBO said, no, no, nah, it's going to be
an hour or two away before anyone gets to you
because you're not having a heart attack, you've got a
chest infection. And then there was a story just a
couple of weeks by the way, he did have a
heart attack, just fyi. And then there was a story
a couple of weeks ago of a seventeen year old
girl who died of asthma. Asthma a completely treatable situation.

(01:27):
He just chuck some oxygen in there and you'll be
able to save her life. Died of asthma because the
operator coded it wrong and sent the AMBO crew on
a break instead of to save her life. And by
the time they realized the mistake, my must have called
a thousand times. By the time they got there, not
able to be saved anymore. Something is wrong here with
the AMBO service. I don't think it's just funding. I mean,

(01:48):
some of it obviously is funding, like we shouldn't be
relying on a life saving service that runs on donations.
That's mental. But it's obviously bigger than funding as well,
because if you've got people incorrectly coding events, which is
happening quite often at the moment, then I don't think
funding is going to fix that anyway. I've got to
a point where I've just accepted it. I've accepted the
situation is what it is. I've made myself an alternative plan.

(02:09):
If we've got an emergency in the house, I've got
a plan for how I'm going to get people to
the hospital myself, because I do not anymore think that
I can rely on Sir John, And I just wonder
how many other people have got to that point too.
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