The ambulance service has issued a warning to workers about staffing levels in the coming weeks saying its position is "significantly depleted".
Staff at the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service have received an email from one of its directors saying that it is doing all that it can to provide the required level of shift cover as it feels the pressures of a number of staff absences due to Covid and sickness.
The email says that the NIAS recognises the impact that the reduced levels of staff can have on those who are working and that it has taken a range of actions to mitigate this.
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These include enhanced overtime payments, asking student EMT volunteers to make themselves available and requesting assistance from other ambulance services in the UK.
It has said that it has exhausted all of the options available to it.
The email said: "I firstly want to thank those people who have worked under very difficult circumstances this week to populate rotas and cover shifts especially considering the escalating levels of Covid within our teams. I would like to reassure all staff of the extent of efforts by your managers to support their valued teams and overall service delivery. A plan to manage this weekend, next week and subsequently the summer period is underway and a range of measures have been implemented to achieve satisfactory cover.
"Our current shift position is significantly depleted and only addressed, to a degree, through substantial A&E support and IAS cover. The potential for it to deteriorate further remains in light of abstractions through Covid and sickness.
"Call handler staffing in our Emergency Control Room is particularly challenged over the week due to a high number of Covid absences. We have sought support from EMAS and SAS who have agreed to take calls during peak demand periods.
"I recognise how this type of pressure, associated with service delivery issues, can cause to staff to feel distressed at their inability to deliver the care they would want to. Therefore I wanted to highlight the actions we have taken to mitigate the impact of this over the next week and reassure you that we have exhausted the options available to us in the short-term."
The ambulance service also told staff that other work has been taking place in order to improve its staffing levels in the medium to long term.
The NIAS said that new performance indicators have been published to hold all health trust, including the NIAS, to account for delays in unscheduled care.
It said: "Potentially most significant, SPPG (formerly the HSCB) have published a suite of performance indicators to hold all Trusts accountable for delays in unscheduled care, these include Trust specific handover delays and discharge rates per provider organisation. SPPG have instructed that each Trusts’ (including NIAS) performance and activity return to pre-COVID levels in 2019.
"Whilst there are many challenges with NIAS and hospital provider Trusts delivering these targets, there will be monthly monitoring and exception reporting as SPPG hold us accountable for delivery. This will ensure this issue is managed by the Department of Health and we must all account for our efforts in targeting improvements in handover delays."
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