Brandon Sun - PRINT EDITION
Paramedic fatigue in rural areas is a reality that the Western Regional Health Authority is continually facing.
Pat Cockburn, a senior adviser with the RHA, said a shortage of paramedics in southwestern Manitoba is to blame.
“In the small, rural communities we do have challenges with recruitment and retention,” Cockburn said. “For the Western region, the majority of the ambulance stations are located in small, rural communities.”
An ambulance rollover early Tuesday morning brought the issue of work-related fatigue to the forefront, after Manitoba Government and General Employees Union officials reported that one of the paramedics had fallen asleep at the wheel.
The rollover occurred on Highway 16, about 10 kilometres east of Neepawa, around 6:45 a.m. The ambulance wound up in the ditch, but no patient was on board. The two paramedics in the ambulance weren’t hurt in the crash.
“There has always been the concern about the fatigue and … we’re having less and less casual employees to call upon,” Cockburn said.
The Swan River-based paramedics had transferred a patient to Winnipeg and were on their way back when they crashed. A union representative explained that prior to the accident, the paramedics were either working or on standby for about 72 hours.
Their pagers went off several times Monday while on standby. They were back for the night shift that evening, and were sent on the Winnipeg transfer at 10 p.m.
They would have been up all night and left Winnipeg around
5 a.m.
Cockburn said once on-call employees have transferred a patient, if they are too tired to respond to another call, they are asked to “take themselves off call so that they can pull over and get the rest that they need.”
The region has several recruitment initiatives on the go, in an effort to bring more paramedics to the rural areas.
“We’re working hard with the communities, where needed, to try to identify people who would be interested in emergency medical services — whether it be as a career or whether it be as someone living in the community who can provide an EMS service around their regular job,” Cockburn said.
Basic training is offered both online and in the traditional classroom.
“So depending on how a person learns better, there’s an option there,” Cockburn said.
“We will be working further with school divisions to see if there’s any kind of a partnership that we can have … across the region, so that students in high school can start to take some of the theory necessary for their basic requirements.”
For more information on becoming an emergency worker, call EMS manager Louise Stitt at the Souris Health Centre at 204-483-6226.
» jaustin@brandonsun.com
Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition August 30, 2012
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Paramedic fatigue in rural areas is a reality that the Western Regional Health Authority is continually facing.
Pat Cockburn, a senior adviser with the RHA, said a shortage of paramedics in southwestern Manitoba is to blame.
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Paramedic fatigue in rural areas is a reality that the Western Regional Health Authority is continually facing.
Pat Cockburn, a senior adviser with the RHA, said a shortage of paramedics in southwestern Manitoba is to blame.
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