After an 18½ hour shift, Jim Avard had a terrible accident. His experience became a lightning rod for furious paramedics in a dispute that threatens to engulf the ambulance service.
His shift started at 7am on June 26. He was about to knock off when he was dispatched from Wangaratta Hospital to a job in Corowa, almost 50 kilometres away.
“I think what the crash did was ripped off the bandaid that was holding the festering sore,” Avard says. But Hill says the anger from union members over the lack of support for a long-serving paramedic was white-hot. This week, state parliament’s upper house endorsed a Liberal push to establish an inquiry into Ambulance Victoria.
Call-takers, who do not have medical training, follow an automated script, that can lead to ambulances being sent to minor incidents, placing significant strain on crews. A source close to Ambulance Victoria said the organisation was grappling with an exodus of experienced staff, budgetary constraints and having to redesign its services after the pandemic.
The source said that a relatively new leadership team was trying to do its best in a very challenging environment.He said chief executive Jane Miller, who took on the top job in January 2023, was Ambulance Victoria’s first appointed chief executive since its inception in 2008 who was not a paramedic or formerly employed by the emergency service.
Ambulance Managers and Professionals Association director Scott Crawford points to the investigation, which occurred under the previous leadership, to illustrate what he calls a “toxic workplace culture”. “Their views are ignored – despite the fact our members have intimate knowledge of how the service runs.”
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