*missing a conclusion btw*
Our paramedics provide a crucial and important component of Australia’s public health care system. They are the first responders to any emergency case we have, wither its life threating or not. There are over 16,000 full-time paramedics employed in Australia alone and respond to over 3 million calls every year.
Hello everybody, today I am here to discuss the dangers of being in the paramedic workforce, more importantly the alarming rates of assault that has been appearing lately and how this can severely traumatize them. Secondly, how the State and Federal Governments should be providing more funding and lastly, what can we do about the issue of violence in the workforce.
I would just like to start by saying that we may not all appreciate having them for us. We tend to think that they have only one duty to do and that is to take us to hospital. Well, this is often not the case. Recently, an alarming rate of assault, being conducted mostly at night has led to some paramedics speaking up. On average a paramedic in Victoria is assaulted every 50 hours and that last year alone, there has been over 150 instances of assault reported. Steff Dewhurst, a paramedic who has been doing the profession for 4 years has recently been assaulted, abused and threatened over the past year. Now I would imagine that on that day, she came into work believing that she would be home safe after her shift, however this is not the case. Steff emphases how at one point a patient told her that he was going to stalk her and strangle her to death. Ms Dewhurst was assaulted so badly she was in a coma, she remembers the paramedics voices saying ‘can you open your eyes’ and ‘squeeze my hand Steff’ I can imagine what she went through and now there’s a chance she may never come back, because of what person did. Ambulance Victoria has indeed taken several measures to stop deterrence such as the ‘It’s never ok’ campaign by Worksafe Victoria which highlights that aggression and abuse towards paramedics and health-care workers is unacceptable.
Moving on, there has been some controversy on how poorly Paramedics have been treated by the State Government. Fatigue issues, failing to improve working conditions and failing to upgrade defective equipment are some of the problems they are currently facing, with no help from the State Government. Paramedics should be entitled to better access to breaks, more resources, better pay and improved paramedic safety. These things can’t magically appear out of nowhere, they have to be funded for. However, many people argue that the State Government does allocate funding for paramedics and hiring new staff, however, this simply can’t be enough. If we continue to face this problem in the future, then trainee paramedics should be trained to deal with these circumstances and also, why is it that Ambulance Victoria has recently implanted ‘no go zones’ throughout Victoria where a police escort is required at every visit to a patient’s house, even our own suburb Hampton Park is listed as one of them. What does this tell you about it
Lastly, I would just like to bring up on how we, as a nation can do to try to put a stop to this. When we think of violence, we typically think of alcohol. Well this can be the case however there are other forms of violence. A paramedics main focus is to care for the patients they are sent to. They are there for help however this becomes way too easy for family members, bystanders to vent out frustrations against the ambulance crew. Many people say that Ambulance Victoria is already taking out measures on this, by writing up messages on their vehicles. However, I would like to point out that this is simply not enough and that I doubt people would seriously take a chance to re-consider their actions. We should introduce new laws to offenders, this would act as a deterrence and depending on how serious the case is, the harsher the sentence is.
-end-
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