Unsung medical heroes: Saints in every sense

Sirens screaming, lights flashing, the St John rapid response vehicle pulls up outside a Henderson home.

Advanced paramedic Tim Bradley strides quickly through the darkness and rain, his emergency kit slung over one shoulder.

Inside, it's too late. An 83-year-old woman is lying dead on the floor of her bedroom, after suffering a heart attack. Bradley comforts the woman's weeping son, as her body is neatly wrapped in a sheet for police to collect.

It's 9.36pm. Despite the rain, it's been a fairly quiet night so far.

Three-and-a-half hours into his 12-hour shift, Bradley explains that the perception of ambulance work as a never-ending drama of carnage, trauma and road smashes is at odds with reality. "A large part of the job is just being a caring person," he says.

The non-profit organisation, which provides ambulance services for about 85 per cent of New Zealanders, responded to around 242,000 emergency calls last financial year. Of those, roughly 70 per cent were patients with medical problems rather than injuries, and fewer than 5 per cent were patients with life-threatening conditions.

On this particular Friday night, advanced paramedic Andrew Herbert also attends a woman with a suspected diabetic coma who turns out to have an infection, a crash in which no one is injured, an asthmatic patient anxiously hyperventilating, a young man whose penis is stuck in his zipper, a brawl that has dispersed by the time he arrives, a woman with a dislocated elbow, a baby having a convulsion, and an elderly man with uncontrollable bleeding from his nose. The nearly 90 ambulances operating in the Northern region, which stretches from the Coromandel and Hauraki to Cape Reinga, are dispatched by staff from a call centre in Mt Wellington in Auckland.

The centre's staff answer about 8000 emergency calls a month, prioritising them according to patient risk and assigning jobs with the help of a computerised mapping system. A priority one call means the emergency is life-threatening and warrants lights, sirens and speeds up to 30km/h over the speed limit.

Some nights they race from one emergency to another, especially on Fridays, when alcohol is often a factor in accidents and assaults.

Each of the advanced paramedics has stories to tell of rushing car-crash victims to hospital, rescuing teenagers unconscious after too many party pills, and resuscitating heart attack victims moments away from death.

 

Despite the obvious potential for stress, the job is unanimously appraised by ambulance officers and paramedics as "rewarding" - which is one of the reasons they stay.

It's not a lucrative profession, with degree-qualified ambulance officers (some of them former nurses) earning about $45,000 a year and advanced paramedics who double as managers earning around $55,000 a year.

For that money they work four 12-hour shifts a week.

The work has definitely changed over the years, say staff waiting in the spic-and-span tea-room of the Mt Wellington station.

Bradley, who has worked with St John for the past 14 years, says the number of car crash trauma cases has decreased dramatically since barriers were erected on many of Auckland's motorways.

Conversely, the number of drug overdoses has soared as the popularity of party pills has grown, he says.

 

Then of course, there's Auckland's traffic problem.

A screaming siren with various settings such as "high-low", "wail" or "yelp" is used to warn road users of an advancing ambulance, but the risk of a collision at intersections crammed with impatient drivers is high.

Reports of ambulances in crashes rarely escape the news, although they are still rare, considering the distances they travel. In the past financial year alone, 525 St John vehicles travelled a total of 13.5 million kilometres.

Another change for ambulance staff is the growing number of elderly people that constitute the bulk of St John's workload.

A call at around 11pm is a classic example.

An 88-year-old woman has alerted St John via her Lifelink alarm after falling while cleaning her Kelston unit.

Bradley arrives, helps the woman up and checks her for injury. He also chats with the woman, alone for the past 25 years, about Joey her cockatiel, and home security.

On the drive back to Mt Wellington, he explains that the majority of Lifelink calls - between 3500 and 4000 are made every month - are not medical emergencies.

"We always respond," says Bradley. "We can't afford to take that chance."

Next week: They deal with the miracle of new life on a daily basis - we meet the staff at North Shore Hospital's maternity suite.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY