Shortage forces firefighters and police to drive ambulances

Police officers and firefighters in the Bay of Plenty are being forced to drive ambulances because of a shortage of St John staffers.

St John Western Bay of Plenty area manager Jeremy Gooders said such instances were rare, but were occurring because of a lack of volunteers.

At a motorcycle accident at Mt Maunganui last month, a policeman had to drive the ambulance to Tauranga Hospital while the St John officer attended the patient.

"We are short-staffed. It's a growing town with growing demand," Mr Gooders said.

"At times we are very pushed. Where we have used fire personnel or police to drive is for unusually large incidents where we need to use all of our officers in the patient's care.

"Or sometimes the patient needs two skilled officers in the back administering care and we don't have a third officer available," Mr Gooders said.

"We should always have two people in an ambulance and that's what we strive to do and we achieve it nearly all of the time through a big commitment of our volunteer officers."

Single-crewing posed dangers both for patients and for staff who attended callouts at all hours and sometimes were faced with violence, he said.

Mr Gooders said St John had a business plan which aimed to have two qualified officers in each ambulance at every callout, but much of this depended on Ministry of Health funding.

"St John is still heavily reliant on volunteers ... If an ambulance is half-crewed, then officers can't be both driving and in the back looking after patients." People were spending more time in their full-time jobs and many employers couldn't allow people to leave work to attend accidents or training.

The Katikati ambulance had only one full-time staff officer, leaving the ambulance off the road for two to three shifts a week - usually at the busy time for callouts at nights and on weekends and when other medical staff such as doctors were unavailable.

This was far more "critical" than other ambulance staff shortages, he said.

In Maketu and Pukehina, St John relied on emergency response vehicles, which were vans manned by volunteer firefighters who attended callouts that ambulances were called to.

They were trained as St John officers to a basic level and responded because they were often faster and more reliable in rural emergencies, Mr Gooders said.

Meanwhile, the National Distribution Union (NDU), which represents some St John paid staff, said four more full-time officers were required in Tauranga and Mt Maunganui before someone died as a result of staff shortages.

Union area organiser Neil Chapman said that while there were no exact figures, it was believed that about 60 per cent of all ambulance callouts in New Zealand were staffed by only one officer, which was considered unsafe.

- BAY OF PLENTY TIMES