A North East paramedic has spoken of how NHS staff like her are on strike because they are "demoralised", and fed up of a "really scary" situation which is seeing patients across the UK put at risk.
The paramedic told ChronicleLive the shocking truth about how it feels when paramedics are stuck desperately fighting to keep poorly patients alive when there's not a bed in A&E - and how she understands the frustrations of those forced to wait hours for help. Speaking during the third day of strike action by North East Ambulance Service staff affiliated with the UNISON, Unite and GMB unions, the experienced NHS worker laid the blame for the NHS crisis firmly at the door of the Government.
Paramedic Rachel - who has asked that only her first name be published - qualified more than a decade ago and said being a paramedic was her "vocation". But she said contending with long queues outside of hospitals and seeing patients put in greater danger than they should be was heartbreaking.
'We don't have the staff'
Rachel, a UNISON member, said: "We don't have the vehicles or the staff to cope with the demand," she said. "There are always calls waiting and people waiting to get through. And you hear that from people when you arrive at a house and they say they've been waiting for an hour or two hours or three.
"We frankly don't have the staff to cope with the demand in the North East. Obviously it's our dispatchers who see what's coming down the line. They are the ones telling us which jobs to go to, having to decide which take priority - and they can see the jobs stacking up."
Speaking on a day when the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he could not "wave a magic wand" and resolve the NHS pay dispute, Rachel said she felt the Conservative Government had "broken down" the health service.
Ambulances queuing outside of hospital emergency departments has become a common sight around the country - including in the North East where some days have seen hospitals with ambulances "stacked", and paramedics unable to leave to go to a new job because they have not been able to pass on responsibility for a patient to rushed-off-their-feet A&E staff.
Rachel added: "To some extent if we're waiting in a hospital department to handover we can see the jobs stacking up too. We are just waiting to get the go-ahead - you are sitting in a hospital queue waiting and you can hear the radio going off, saying there's a category one patient in need and is anyone able to go. But because you're still with a patient you're not able to go to it, you can't help.
"That's demoralising for us - never mind the dispatch staff who can be in despair. They're calling for help and we are sat unable to help. We're not blaming any part of the NHS - this is the Government and it's due to the neglect of the NHS over the last 13 years."
She said that far from blaming the hospitals, she said the issue was a complex one, with the lack of social care beds and pressures on services like physios contributing to hospital inability to discharge patients. She said: "Services have been destroyed and broken down. It's so demoralising."
She added that the NHS had seen the "worst winter pressures that we've experienced in a long, long time" and went into detail about what happens when an ambulance is queuing up and she or her fellow paramedics are fighting to keep them alive.
'We are just trying to keep giving them the treatment they need'
She said: "Whether they are in a corridor or in the back of the ambulance we are just trying to keep giving them the treatment they need. Even just to keep them warm. It's most difficult when someone might be in pain or requiring active treatment."
She explained that the "pre-alert" system - where A&E teams get a few minutes notice that a patient in urgent need of care is on the way - is usually a safeguard ensuring patients can be rushed through if they need to be, but this is not now always the case.
"Say you had a septic patient," she said. "Generally if we put out a pre-alert we would be able to get them straight into a resus bed. But as of late sometimes you might pre-alert and though you are first in the queue you are still waiting for |a bed. You're just doing your observations, whatever you can, keeping on with any treatment."
Rachel said that any delays - whether that be for tests or seeing a doctor for example - could be lethal. She said: "If there's a delay in getting vital blood tests for example and if that's another ten or twenty minutes - well all of these delays can be life or death. That to us is so scary. We know we have done and are doing our best but we know there's not a bed. And every minute that goes on they're just that little bit more poorly."
Previously, North East Ambulance Service bosses have spoken about how they knew "patients were coming to harm" due to a "particularly volatile" series of pressures on the health service. However, the NHS in the North East is clear that anyone who is in a life-or limb-threatening situation should continue to call 999. Throughout strike action - workers have been attending the most serious calls.
The pay offer
The Government's 2022 pay offer which would see workers get flat increase of £1,400 under the NHS Agenda for Change pay structure. Under the offer, most ambulance staff get a rise of around 4%, the Department for Health and Social Care says, but the Unite, GMB and Unison trade unions say that is a real terms pay cut, with inflation at 10.7%.
The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said on Monday that he is not able to “wave a magic wand” to resolve the bitter dispute over pay. He said giving pay rises to striking staff – including ambulance workers and nurses – would lead to money being taken away from “elsewhere in the NHS budget”.
But he insisted that the Government would continue to “engage in dialogue with the unions”. He told ITV news: "Taking a step back, of course it would be lovely to be able to wave a magic wand and just give everyone what they were demanding when it came to pay.
“But my job as Prime Minister is to make the right decisions for the country, and they are, more often than not, not easy decisions. But that’s my job, and that’s what I will always do in this job, and… when you think about this, how would we pay for these things? Where’s the money going to come from?
"Actually, it’s probably going to have to come from elsewhere in the NHS budget, and that means fewer nurses, fewer doctors, fewer MRI scanners and CT scanners that are diagnosing people with cancer or indeed fewer mental health ambulances that we’re announcing today that are going to save people from going to A&E."
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