News / media articles

Just on that subject, I heard in the news earlier of an ambulance in Dublin that had a sick child within and the vehicle broke down with all the doors locked on it. So a paramedic with the child was locked into the back of it until they were released by the fire service.

I wonder how in this and age this can happen? Surely locks in ambulances should be fail safe instead of fail secure.

Was it a DFB or NAS ambulance?

Longboard wrote: »

Promo for prime time

Related articles
25/03/2014 Breaking news article
25/03/2014 RTE article
25/03/2014 Independent article

Seems to be a witch hunt on lately, funny that the Irish Mirror is not leading the march.
25/03/2014 Appology for ambulance wait after RTA - Irish Times
24/03/2014 Wheels off ambulance - The Examiner
24/03/2014 Wheels off ambulance - The Hearld
23/03/2014 Wheels off ambulance - The Independent
23/03/2014 Ambulance services needs co-ordination - The Independent
21/03/2014 Ambulance breakdown - The Journal
21/03/2014 Ambulance breakdown - The Hearld
21/03/2014 Ambulance breakdown - The Examiner
21/03/2014 Ambulance breakdown - The Irish Mirror
19/03/2014 Child locked in ambulance - The Journal
15/03/2014 Ambulance cover - The Journal

Been move to Wednesday night instead of tonight

POGAN wrote: »

Been move to Wednesday night instead of tonight

9:35 tomorrow night instead to discuss the Gards tonight - Raging!

POGAN wrote: »

Been move to Wednesday night instead of tonight

Thanks Pogan, I for one am glad because i forgot about it

donvito99 wrote: »

Will be watching Prime Time tonight, I expect NAS officers' cars to be put to good use afterwards... ;D

I loved the last bit.. boss says we have the best vehicles, equipment, uniforms, training, servicing ... seems like the gap is the management, accountability, selfishness NAS officers? ... cute hoor.. activity with the abuse of those cars .. shame on the organisation and its leaders

forgot about prime time but caught the last few minutes and to tell the truth I was gobsmacked.the cheek to say they have the est service in Europe what a joke.that poor man near gory that had to watch his brother bleed to death,the people of enniscorthy waiting an hour and a half for an ambulance because there was no crew for the one in the town.a bloody shamble.
just over a year ago my son who was 6 1/2 at the time had breathing trouble(luckily nt too serious) so my wife called southdoc who in turn called for an ambulance.
the rapid response arrived quite quick as did the doctor but we must have waited at least 45mins for the ambulance as it had to go to cork first then come to us and because they weren't from the area they got lost too.the best service in Europe!!!

Having watched the programme, some thoughts come to mind.

If you know nothing about NAS, all seems completely believeable. If you do, different story.......

The majority of the programme was built around a collection of newspaper articles where family members were subsequently sought out and interviewed. Whilst these stories are truly traumatic for the families involved, these calls represent less that 0.1% of all 999 calls. They did not reference all of the calls that go right (99.9%), but yet we have a crisis.

and

3 x "whistle blowers" interviewed and identified (two former NAS) are well known in NAS circles as being seriously "disgruntled" with at least two of them being NASRA mouthpieces.

These points alone draw into question the entirety of the piece. Remember, journalistic principles are based on balanced, not one sided reporting.

The shift dropping piece focused on exaggerating numbers where rosters have actually changed and rostered overtime removed. Agreed rostered are not dropped shifts. Just another example here of grievances about loosing rostered overtime under the PSA being aired in public. The programme touched on the high level of absenteeism but did not prob it.

The use of stats was pointed. They did not examine any statistic trends from published data that shows modest improvements. They did not explain any of the indicators or clarify that they did not apply to all 999 calls. They did not adequately explain from the public viewing perspective what categories of calls they commented on or whether or not they were encompassed by the Response KPIs. What they did do, I suspect without knowing it, was demonstrate that dynamic deployment and call prioritisation were actively being used.

The quoting of the numbers of ambulances in Ireland did not clarify that these vehicles were not on the road but actually additional spare capacity that had been reduced because of changes to manufacturers preventative schedules and/or improved centralisation of fleet management and rotation. Again, the public viewer was left with a warped perception that there were X number of ambulances less on the road. They not not quote the total man hours available year on year (easily available through FOI) or quote the fact that staff numbers have gone from 1398 in 2010 to 1650 today.

The single most disturbing fact for me when listening to the well known disgruntled former Wexford Controller talking about the "county" was that they did not pick up on the problems that multiple Control Centres cause. In that particular piece, they mentioned a couple of calls in Gorey, but, failed to pick up on the fact that the next nearest Station was Arklow, not Wexford or Enniscorthy. Demonstrates the tunnel vision of the whistle blower and the journo looking for a story. More importantly from a patient's perspective, it did not expose the weaknesses of having multiple Control Centres. Really worrying when people in Control Centres don't understand they are supposed to call a neighbouring Control Centre to check if their ambulance (if closer) is available

The piece about ORVs originated in the former NE. If you look at PQs on www.kildarestreet.com you will see the same Sinn Fein TDs from the same area have raised the issue consistently. There have been some exceptions to the rule where local NASRA do what they do well, tell a half arsed story to the local media and tar everyone in NAS with the one brush. TDs only raise issues when people contact them. The NE was a big loser of overtime. The piece failed to acknowledge that some Officers, e.g. ECAOs, regularly respond to emergency calls. It also failed to acknowledge that those Officers whom are on call receive no payment whatsover and are on call for a lot more than responding to calls. They also did not probe what procedures are in place: http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/list/3/nas/educationcompetencyassurance/rptspoliciesandprocedures/businesssupport.html

The piece about 3 new Stations in the West was poorly researched. The plan was always to introduce the Intermediate Care Service in those areas (this has happened), free up emergency ambulances from transfers (e.g. Castlebar Hospital is a big user for transfers) and redistribute the available ambulances to provide better coverage using the same resources to the same number of calls. Not remotely explained or explored.

The piece did not explore the legal morass that NAS has had to deal with from years of being sued by private operators trying inhibit the development of the Intermediate Care Service to slice of the non emergency workload what what that has cost the country.

The piece did not explore the role of Unions or HSE Corporate in supporting or inhibiting change.

The inputs from the Director, NAS was probably heavily edited but nevertheless very disappointing and probably reflective of the current quality of leadership as distinct from management (two different but complementary concepts). What is laughable tonite, is that some of the Officers within NAS are commenting on Facebook as I write about how accurate the programme was, etc. etc. What they seem not to realise is that they are the "Managers" being referred to and it is their failure to provide leadership during difficult times that is an the core of many issues within NAS. A good kick up the arse for some of them about these cars has been along time coming.

The internal credibility of the PHECC contributor was also disappointing. This was a piece for someone with a strong clinical background. Also disappointing that they did not interview the NAS Medical Director or anyone from HIQA.

Overall, the piece was poor, narrow and an obvious airing of a small minority of staff's grievances, facilitated by an eager and lazy media outlet. It was completely one sided and without balance, something you would expect from our national broadcaster.

The most important message was probably lost because of the way the story was told. Ireland was never, from the get go, ever in a position to deliver on the HIQA standards. You cannot introduce UK style performance indicators without UK levels of resourcing. It was always the case that NAS had to deal with it's inefficiencies and work practices before it could justify any new investment. It has done that, hence all the reform, organisational change, parochial responses, loss of overtime, etc. However, now is the time for politicians to step up to the plate, make hard decisions, take money from non essential public services and invest heavily in NAS. The alternative is more of the same.

This is Ireland, and I am a realist and I suspect, we will get a run on the media, lots of PQs, targeted slants on the Minister by the Opposition and expert "assessment" and "analysis" from the usual bag of "experts" rolled out on Newstalk, Pat Kenny, Morning Ireland, Twitter, etc. but nothing will change and people will still fearful and we continue to undermine the professionalism and morale of the people whom serve us in our time of most need.

There is no escaping that we are under resourced. Some parts of the country are worse resourced than others.

Controllers are under pressure everyday to get ambulance to calls even though the ambulances are stretched passed coping.
The regional control centres always look to neighbouring areas for help getting ambulances in life threatening calls. (The poster above mentioned Gorry, but the nearest other eastern region base is Arklow, which is another ambulance station under pressure with resources, I imagine the Arklow ambulance was out)
The development of the national control will help, but that still won't make ambulances appear out of thin air.

The program showed a snapshot of an under resourcing problem spanning the country. From rural Ireland And including the problems the Dublin fire brigade and dublin based national ambulance service ambulances have getting to calls.

I don't think labelling the "whistleblowers" as disgruntled or any thing else makes a difference. I work in the service and ALL my colleagues feel that the only issue with the program was that it did not highlight the full extent of the problems. I think the staff members were very brave to go on tv and tell the story to the people. Everyone should know that the ambulance service is not safely resourced, and that some of the scant resources are being misused by management.

Also yes staff levels have increased, but most of those positions are for the patient transport service (intermediate care) and we do not have any more paramedics in our area. There may be a small increase of paramedics in some areas of the country. But it certainly doesn't go far enough to maintain the service.
Maybe the increase in staff levels would explain the numbers of officers/managers in the country.

In a nut shell: the program had an agenda and that was to highlight the resourcing problems, it did that. They weren't exaggerating any part. In fact I feel that management got of lightly compared to the reality.

crackcrack30 wrote: »

CPR band could cost 15k?
Top of range defib 20k?
It's not cheap to kit out a car I'd say...


I think somethings have to happen here like for instance driving their own car to work like everyone else in the country..... If they need a car or van when they get there that's a different story have one or two that can be shared....kitted or non kitted?


Do they get on call allowance,
- If yes then take the car home but be available as a resource with no gripes & log calls to prove need/efficency in area...
- If no the they have no business answering calls or having a car...
end of.

Your right - kitting out the RRV so that everything an Advanced Paramedic would need to do his/her job is on board - woul not be cheap at all.

Thing im wondering though - is if the manager goes on call - could there not be an RRV there for that purpose - and it would only be for responding to calls.

So if you go on call on a Wednesday evening - you can bring the RRV with you - so its there for any calls.

But if your not going on call on Thursday - you don't get the RRV - and its there for anyone else to use

Unfortunately, it seems there is little understanding within NAS for the purpose of ORVs. Obviously, there is less in the public domain when you put the Prime Time spin version out there. The attached might help answer questions: http://www.hse.ie/eng/services/list/3/nas/educationcompetencyassurance/rptspoliciesandprocedures/businesssupport.html

My understanding (open to correction) is that procedure was an effort to manage the disparity between various Officers being available for service needs. There is a difference between being available and being calls out. You can be available all night but not be called out because there is no actual service need. The "available" element is about risk mitigation, i.e. having access to someone in the event of, etc. Those Officers whom make themselves available for business hours only (cannot take cars home), partial hours (minimum requirement) which recognises some Officers may have to travel early for work purposes or full availability. Full availability is often used when the Officer lives in an area where First Response is a significant benefit to the service. An example would be Wicklow. It is important to stress that none of these Officers are paid a retainer, or on call money, or mileage, or receive payments for callouts. It is a good will system because unlike other emergency services, NAS does not have enough Officers to provide 24/7 cover.

For the most part, i would agree with CrackCrack30 on the sick leave but would add a couple:

Significant female workforce whom are more prone to musculoskeletal injury

Pregnancy related sick leave (3 months) and increased maternity leave together with unpaid maternity leave generally means gone for 12 months

Culture - from the time you arrive, you are told by some union heads to make sure and use ALL your sick days

Overtime scams - back in the day when short notice sick leave shifts were covered, it was not unusual for a couple of "mates" to create overtime opportunities for each other. Source of a lot of today's noise......

Force majeure leave

Increase parental leave

Carers leave

For 11 years (1997-2008), the unions blocked the introduction of a relief factor, i.e. a cohort of workers to cover all forms of leave (FOI the correspondence) so that inflated overtime earnings and lifestyles could be maintained. It has all backfired now, despite eventually agreeing to it in 2008. The Welsh Ambulance Service uses a 35% relief factor, many others use 40%. Ireland got agreement on 30% which is not enough when you consider all of the reasons (thank you EU legislation) for not coming to work

Annual leave - When someone can't get leave, a minority just ring in sick

And then there is the matter of how it is counted.........for the average worker, a sick day is a calendar day. However in NAS, if you were due to work a 12 hour shift and rang in sick, it is still a calendar day even though it costs the service 1.5 days to cover. Before OT rates were cut, that was 1.5 x doubletime overtime (if no relief available), or 3 days pay to cover 1 days sick leave. Does take a rocket scientist to figure out why there is so much angst about sick leave.