Posted 14 Jun

Your Safety Comes First

Dear Member,
NSW Ambulance has consistently failed to comply with both the Work Instruction – DISP 6.03 – Extension of Paramedic Shifts and WI2020-139 End of Shift Transfer of Care, particularly as it relates to cars in bed block. We know this is putting our safety at risk due to it increasing our fatigue.   

Members should comply with the NSW Ambulance policies and procedures referenced above.

End of shift

• If you are within the last thirty minutes of your shift, you should only be assigned a Priority 1 incident  
• After your rostered shift completion time you should only be assigned a 1A or 1B  
• An hour after your rostered shift completion time you should be marked as “Out of Service Unavailable”.
  

Relieving crews in bed block after finish time

• If a crew are past their finish time in bed block, they, or any crew who is at hospital & not close to finish time, should radio control and request relief. The patient should only be transferred to a crew once they have offloaded their patient. Crews should never take over care of more than one patient at a time.
• While APA (NSW) does not agree with NSW Ambulance that the policy mandates crews must request to relieve a crew before doing so, we have agreed to this change in a show of good faith. 
• You should swap cars, but if this is not possible, simply transfer via stretcher.
• If you are on road and you are aware of a car stuck in bed block past their finish time, you should request to relieve them.
• If the crew stuck after their end of shift have been there for less than one hour you should only be diverted from relieving them for Priority 1 incidents. If they are over an hour past shift extension, you should only be diverted from relieving them for Priority 1A or 1B incidents.  

We have informed NSW Ambulance that if they fail to comply with the above Work Instructions, we will initiate the disputes procedure, including taking them to the IRC if needed to protect Paramedic well-being.

If the above policies are not complied with, go through the following steps:

• Escalate to your DOM and APA (NSW) delegate
• Report to APA (NSW) here
• As always, your safety comes first, if you feel too fatigued to continue working safely you should cease work immediately and notify your DOM.
  
  In solidarity,
  APA (NSW) Executive
  
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