#BTEditorial – Let’s take care of the EMTs as they take care of us

We now have 10 functioning ambulances and a team of just about 60 Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) with around 10 paramedics to service our country.

The new $200 000 ambulance received on Wednesday is indeed a welcomed addition. It was a year ago, January 2023, when we reported that the Maria Holder Memorial Trust donated two ambulances to respond to the 14 000 to 16 000 emergency calls the Emergency Ambulance Service (EAS) receives annually.

At the time, in addition to the two fully-equipped ambulances, the Trust also donated two additional stretchers, safety vests, helmets and dispatcher headsets. The EAS said then that the aim was to get a fleet of 12 ambulances, which means they are now two ambulances shy of their goal.

However, in an interview with the media on Wednesday after the handover of the newest vehicle, consultant head Dr David Byer said more staff is needed to adequately service the country.

He explained: “We have actually made the recommendation to have some more staff and that is before the powers that be. Hopefully, if that is approved, we should be able to have more staff to be able to service the population.”

We have carried previous reports where EMTs have complained about working conditions and hours of work. It is about over five years now since they have been housed at the Wildey, St Michael location after decades of complaining about the conditions under which they were working at the EAS headquarters on Martindale’s Road.

Sadly, their realities remain the same.

Still a major complaint for them is the limited personnel on any given shift. EMTs are still up in arms about the fact that many days they work an entire shift, and sometimes extra hours, without a lunch break. Not because the powers that be are not allowing them to take the break, but because of the high number of back-to-back calls made to the EAS.

Then there is still the disrespect and verbal abuse they receive from irate relatives of the sick. Oftentimes, EMTs have lamented that if they arrive “late” due to the unavailability of an ambulance, traffic or any other reason, relatives are quick to let them have it verbally.

In instances where the ambulance is parked a distance because of road network logistics, they are expected to lift and carry a sick person, no matter their weight. Some have complained of chronic back pains because of this.

Whether the emergency call is to attend to a sick person – who later admits that they were sick for weeks but refused to seek medical attention – or to respond to a serious accident, the EMT is expected to show up.

Patients in the ambulance, too, have been abusive if they believe that they are not getting to the Accident and Emergency Department (AED) as swiftly as they would like.

Added to all this, they are expected to manoeuvre through traffic gridlock, with many motorists disrespectful to them because they see them as an inconvenience on the road.

Dr Byer also said there were sometimes inadequate stretchers to respond to calls due to limited space in the AED and a shortage of gurneys there: “Whenever we respond to a 511 call, we normally go for the patient and put them on a stretcher. Sometimes when we get [to the QEH] we cannot transfer that patient from the ambulance stretcher to the AED gurney, given the number of patients there, so we have to leave the stretcher with the patient. . . . Sometimes we have the personnel and we have ambulances but we have no stretchers or a limited number of stretchers and that impacts in terms of our response times.”

A stretcher is critical since an ambulance cannot provide proper patient care or be dispatched without one.

The patient care provided by the EMTs and paramedics is vital. When they arrive on the scene of an accident or to attend to an ill patient, what they do between the time of pick up and drop off at AED is critical and impacts heavily on life or death situations. So much so that this crucial level of care is provided by specially trained workers. Essentially, not everyone can give emergency care.

A new state-of-the-art ambulance is great. But it’s time for us to give this hard-working group of healthcare workers the kudos and respect due. We should collectively ensure that we take care of them as they set out, each working day, to take care of us.