Petition for Change Tips

MasterLeia

Hey lads , I'm just wondering , how does someone go about making a petition to change the way things are at the moment? (specifically looking to integrate fire service with ambulance)

Dublin fire brigade also has an ambulance service and their fire fighters are also trained paramedics , this is obviously very efficient as if there is no ambulance available , a fire engine will be dispatched to deal with medical callouts , it also improves response time since theres more fire stations than ambulance bases. Dublin also has one of the higest cardiac arrest survival rates in europe since these two services are one service , and the most of the world has the two services integrated and it proves to be efficient , cheaper and saves more lives.

I do not understand why the rest of ireland isnt coping on , we all know the state of the ambulance service , with response times not being the best especially in rural areas. There is alot of rural fire stations and i honestly do not understand why firefighters in the rest of the country , even if only being EFR trained , do not get dispatched to rural medical callouts as it is better to have someone than no one.. Putting ambulances in rural fire stations is something that has to be done and i do not really see much negative reasons for it (feel free to correct me). I am really enthusiastic about changing this , is there any advice on how to start a petition to change things like this? It doesnt have to be specifically for this issue , i just need advice on how to start a petition in general to the government (or whoever it may concern).

Cheers lads

Del2005

Most rural fire fighters are retained so aren't in the station to respond to calls. So they would need to travel to the station and back to respond to medical calls, with our dispersed settlement it would take to long to respond.

We already have community 1st responders in some places and these should be encouraged and expanded. Because we will never get front line services close enough with our one off housing epidemic.

mojopin10

Del2005 wrote: »

Most rural fire fighters are retained so aren't in the station to respond to calls. So they would need to travel to the station and back to respond to medical calls, with our dispersed settlement it would take to long to respond.

We already have community 1st responders in some places and these should be encouraged and expanded. Because we will never get front line services close enough with our one off housing epidemic.

Retained stations have a 5 minute turn in time and are out the door in about 6-7 mins on the last report anyway. When you hear of people waiting over an hour for an ambulance a retained station would absolutely have reached them quicker.

But I admire the moderator looking to change it but it will absolutely never ever happen in this country. Only for public outcry Dublin wouldn’t have ambulances any more. Unions then getting involved, HSE jumping in, NAS, would you force firefighters not interested to upskill if they didn’t want to? Would paramedics have to be trained as firefighters?

For the record I think it would be brilliant. As proven in other countries it is the way to go and i would love to be wrong but it will never happen in Ireland.

flazio

The criteria to become a Dublin firefighter is quite high and if replicated across the country could leave a lot of able firefighters and paramedics out of a job. (E.g. It's perfectly OK to need glasses in the ambulance service but not in the fire service)
I'm of the opinion that like carpentry and plumbing are different trades but both part of construction, Pre hospital emergency medicine and fire and rescue techniques are two completely different skills involved but both critical to saving lives.
There is likely to be Advanced paramedics out there who know the ins and outs of the human body better than your GP but would struggle with a firefighting fitness test.
Likewise you could have a firefighter who could get a person out of a burning house faster than it took to start the fire but would struggle with getting an IV drip in and I really don't feel safe if people like that were suddenly out of a job.
A lot of retained and full time Fire fighters are PHECC emergency first responders now and some fire brigades are now on the ambulance system as Cardiac First Responders.

NASlad

The mixed fire/ems system is not the most efficient or ideal system. It sounds like it would be, but in the states it's turned EMS into an underfunded and inexperienced ****show. 
There's a reason why the best EMS providers in the world like in Australia etc are not mixed fire systems. I'm not saying I'm against firefighters acting as first responders, but having firefighters being the primary provider of EMS is nonsense, and it has not been proven to be the best way, in fact there have been studies proving the opposite. EMS needs to be a stand alone and dedicated service.
In the rest of the country many retained and full time fire brigades do act as first responders to life threatening calls ie arrests which is fine. But the majority of calls are not life threatening. No point in throwing a fire truck with 5 people on it to medical calls so they can stand around with their hands in their pockets waiting for an ambulance to show up. 
As for the petition? It's not going to do anything, your best bet would be to write to some minister or something but it's an extremely complicated issue and I don't see it happening anytime soon. 
Anyway, despite the amount of information over the years ive read to argue against the mixed fire/ems system, i don't have any on hand right now so whats the point of me even posting this..

palmtrees

mojopin10 wrote: »

Retained stations have a 5 minute turn in time and are out the door in about 6-7 mins on the last report anyway. When you hear of people waiting over an hour for an ambulance a retained station would absolutely have reached them quicker.

But I admire the moderator looking to change it but it will absolutely never ever happen in this country. Only for public outcry Dublin wouldn’t have ambulances any more. Unions then getting involved, HSE jumping in, NAS, would you force firefighters not interested to upskill if they didn’t want to? Would paramedics have to be trained as firefighters?

For the record I think it would be brilliant. As proven in other countries it is the way to go and i would love to be wrong but it will never happen in Ireland.

Can you back up the parts in bold?

Anecdotally, the retained firefighters turnout times vary wildly where I'm from, depending on whether it's from a city or rural station.

I'm pretty sure the evidence out there suggests that fire-based EMS is not as perfect as it sounds. It sounds like a quick fix to all of the ambulance service's problems, and is easy to argue in favour of, but the data out there suggests otherwise. Here's one such analysis of it https://motownmiller.wordpress.com/2016/02/28/a-case-for-third-service-ems/.