Burnout pushing paramedics to leave emergency roles for ‘less stressful’ jobs

Paramedics working in the ambulance services are voting with their feet and leaving for less stressful health service jobs or better resourced positions in other countries, TDs and Senators have been told.

Representatives of Dublin Fire Brigade and the National Ambulance Service told the Oireachtas health committee that the work of ambulance services had moved well beyond patient transfers.

They said officers were now trained as paramedics and advanced paramedics and performing life-saving work, often at scenes of accidents or violent incidents.

The committee heard the working day for ambulance service members was nominally a 12 hour shift, but this frequently turned into shifts of up to 18 hours.

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Geoff McEvoy, Siptu organiser at Dublin Fire Brigade’s ambulance service, said crews met “the worst the city has to offer” in terms of road traffic accidents, fires and violence on a daily basis, and sometimes several times a day.

He told Senator Frances Black that personnel often end their shift having dealt with traumatic incidents such as the deaths of young people and leave the stations without being asked about how they are coping by management. Many people working in the field suffer burn out and leave, he said.

‘Jeopardising’

Mr McEvoy said there was now “a critical need for staff in Dublin ambulance and fire services” and the shortage was “jeopardising the safe system of work that people need to operate under”.

He said Dublin Fire Brigade needed some 450 extra officers but that each six-month intake amounted to just 45 new members. With officers leaving and others reaching their retirement, overall numbers were declining, he said.

Siptu sectoral organiser Ted Kenny told the committee of a situation in which an ambulance was dispatched to Slea Head on the Dingle Peninsula from Castletownbere in Co Cork, about 2½ hours away.

He said he accepted anecdotal evidence of a brigade being dispatched from Donegal to attend an incident in Tipperary. The problem was caused by a system which dispatched “the nearest available” resource, he said. But in practice the Donegal crew would be stood down when one closer to Tipperary came available.

This, he said, meant a crew could travel up to 700km a day without actually attending the scene of an incident, but often without time to stop for food or a comfort break.

Better resourced

He said the conditions were leading to burn-out as ambulance crews were moving to other jobs in the health service and even going abroad to units that were better resourced.

“It is absolutely frightening what is going on,” he said, noting that Scotland was a similar environment to Ireland but had 2½ times the number of personnel.

Mr Kenny also said there needs to be a “media-driven” education campaign to deter people from calling ambulances for minor injuries such as “broken toe nails”. These could probably be better death with in primary care or by people travelling themselves to hospital emergency departments, he said.

Liam Woods, national director of acute operations with the HSE, told the committee that National Ambulance Service staffing had increased by more than 500 since 2015.

He said the service’s fleet had increased by 21 per cent to 630 vehicles since 2019, but he acknowledged an increasing gap between capacity and demand.

This year recruitment has been outpaced by demand, which has grown by almost 30 per cent, he said.