An Otago woman with a broken arm was left waiting for an ambulance for more than three hours amid soaring demand on the ambulance service. Outram Volunteer Fire Brigade Chief Fire Officer Stu Casey said a handful of volunteer firefighters kept her company during her wait, as well as a local nurse and doctor. “She was pretty sore, needed some help, so we came for a lift assist. The local doctor and prime nurse were there, so she was in good care. It was just the transport to hospital took a while to get arranged.” CFO Casey said this kind of wait was not unusual, and it was happening nationwide. The reasons for that were chronic understaffing and underfunding of Hato Hone St John, as well as more illness and bugs going around, and came off the back of the ambulance service’s level 1 major incident declaration last week. “The nationwide story and issue is completely the under-resourcing of St John across the country, and it’s a pretty well-documented flaw of the system at the moment.” However, the major concern for the volunteer fire service was that an under-resourced ambulance service meant it took volunteer firefighters away from their own work or personal time for hours at a time. “It comes with the job these days, unfortunately … it’s not that bad for us, but some of the other brigades around Dunedin are doing around 100 medical calls per year. “So, for us it’s not a big, big issue, but for some of the brigades it’s becoming a pretty big issue around Otago and around the country.” St John director of ambulance operations Doug Gallagher said last week demand soared when 2606 calls came through on one night, surpassing the previous record of 2562 only set on August 8. “Demand remained exceptionally high over the weekend, with 2507 calls received on Saturday, August 15, and 2268 calls on Sunday, August 16.” He reminded the public not every person who called 111 required an ambulance response, and not every ambulance attendance resulted in transport to an emergency department. There was no single cause behind the increase in demand, Mr Gallagher said. laine.priestley@odt.co.nz
