There’s no service more important to our community than Ambulance Tasmania, but patients and ambulance workers are being let down by a Rockliff government that won’t do what’s necessary to address massive issues in the system.
The Mercury’s report about an ambulance communications worker that suffered serious psychological damage due to critical staff shortages was deeply distressing. What’s even worse is that right across the state we have staff in the ambulance service who are experiencing real suffering and harm.
Tasmanian health staff do an amazing job under terrible circumstances, but they continue to be let down by the Rockliff government. The result is terrible strain on staff, and patients being put at greater risk because they can’t get an ambulance in a timely way in an emergency.
The head of Ambulance Tasmania himself says that a quarter of all emergency calls in Tasmania don’t have an ambulance allocated within the required timeframes. And every second hour there’s an emergency requiring an ambulance that is left waiting for more than 35 minutes for it to arrive. When every minute counts, 35 minutes is an eternity. But still the government have refused to invest in the staffing their own experts recommended was needed to deliver safe and reliable response times.
We know ambulance staff are suffering significant psychological damage thanks to understaffing, and we know patients are being put at significant risk too. But what we don’t know is the true extent of the harm being caused by ever-increasing delays to ambulance responses. On top of improving staffing and services, this is another critical issue the government must address.
The Greens released a comprehensive plan for a safe and reliable ambulance service during the recent state election campaign. Our plan invests in every element of ambulances services – from on-road paramedics, to the communications centre, expanding secondary triage, new vehicles, building stations, and much more. This is what Tasmania needs, and we’re committed to fighting hard for real action throughout this term of parliament.
