An overworked paramedic narrowly avoided death after falling asleep at the wheel and crashing an ambulance following a nightmare 18-hour shift.
The Victorian paramedic had started work at 7am on Wednesday and was 14 hours into his shift when he was asked to drive to New South Wales for one last job.
He finished at about 1.30am on Thursday and was driving home when his vehicle hit an embankment at 90km/h and rolled onto its side in Victoria’s north-east.
The ambulance crew managed to free him from the wreckage before transporting him to Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Danny Hill, secretary of the Victorian Ambulance Union, said paramedics working 18-hour shifts was not an isolated case and blamed the gruelling workload for putting lives at risk.
“This happens on a daily basis, we are not surprised at all,” Hill told Channel Nine. Today on Tuesday.
“This happens every day that paramedics work… four or five hours of forced incidental overtime and it is difficult for them to refuse to do it.”
“But too often they are sent to emergency departments or responding to very low-acuity cases and they are often used as a utility, often to stop the clock on government KPIs and it becomes dangerous,” he said.
The paramedic had been working from 7am until 1.30am the following morning when his ambulance hit an embankment at 90km/h and overturned.
Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill (pictured centre) said paramedics working an 18-hour shift were not an isolated case.
Mr Hill said the paramedic had not stopped during the entire 18-and-a-half-hour shift.
At around 9 p.m., the paramedic expressed concern about the number of hours he had worked when he was given one last interstate job.
“They had been in Wangaratta Hospital for several hours. At about 9.30pm they said, ‘Look, we’ve been in hospital for about 14 hours,'” Hill said.
‘And then Ambulance Victoria said, ‘Look, we’ve got a job across the border in New South Wales in Corowa and we’ve got no one else who can go. ‘ And so the team left.
Mr Hill said it was common for Victorian crews to respond to jobs in New South Wales as there were no resources close to the border.
The paramedic returned to his base in Myrtleford at 12.30am before dropping off a colleague and returning home.
“It then veered and turned left at 90 km/h and rolled down the embankment,” Hill said.
He added that the paramedic has recovered physically but is distressed.
Mr Hill said he was surprised that cases like this did not happen more often because of heavy workloads.
Victoria’s ambulance union blamed the crash on heavy workloads its members were under.
“The employer must implement control measures, ensure that paramedics have reasonable breaks, that they finish their shift at a reasonable time and that they have a manageable workload,” he said.
“We’re just not seeing enough improvements in that part of the system.”
An Ambulance Victoria spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they were reviewing the incident.
“Our initial enquiries suggest the paramedic and an ambulance officer were on duty when they were dispatched to attend a case in Corowa at 9.30pm on Wednesday 26 June, and were discharged from the case at 11.16pm. They were not assigned to an 18-hour shift,” he said.
‘AV is reviewing the circumstances, including the movement of the ambulance between its arrival at Myrtleford at 12.39am on Thursday 27 June until its return at 1.26am.
“However, there is no indication that the paramedic was dispatched to any case at that time.”
