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VICTORIA, Australia — Ambulance Victoria is defending a plan to allow graduate paramedics to respond to cases alone.
From Monday, graduates with as little as 20 weeks experience, will be used as a first response to emergency cases.
Ambulance Victoria says it will only happen in exceptional circumstances, where the graduate is closest to the emergency and an ambulance will be dispatched as soon as possible.
However, Steve McGhie, from the paramedics union, Ambulance Employees Australia, says the graduates will not be equipped to deal with complex situations.
“The ambulance service, for a long time, have agreed that these people can’t become qualified ambulance paramedics until they’ve completed a full 12-months training,” he said.
“That’s six months being supervised and then a further six months consolidating with very senior paramedics.”
Mr McGhie says it is also very dangerous for both the graduate paramedic and the patient.
“They’re not fully trained, the pressures of bystanders and in some cases there might be aggression,” he said.
“They’re not entitled to administer drugs and things like that, which might be [needed in] a life-saving-type situation.
“So doing those things on their own puts them at risk and leads to an opportunity of mistakes under pressure.”
However, Ambulance Victoria’s general manager of regional services, Tony Walker, says it will only occur in exceptional circumstances.
“These are paramedics, who have finished their university course and finished 20 weeks on road, and in the unusual circumstance where they’re the closest resource to a sick patient and there’s no other paramedic working with them, for example if someone’s called in sick, they’ll be responded, backed up with the nearest ambulance, but can provide that immediate care that can make a difference to someone surviving or not,” he said.
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