Right now, outside hospital emergency departments across the state, flocks of ambulances sit empty, an unnaturally occurring phenomenon known as “ramping”. Their operators, highly skilled paramedics, mill around minding their patients in cramped and chaotic corridors while hospital staff scramble to clear beds.
More and more people are wandering into emergency departments for minor ailments because they can’t access a GP, but they can hardly be blamed. The failing health system leads people to take desperate measures. And yet the premier, Dominic Perrottet, has denied there is ramping issue in NSW and refused to budge on the wage cap for paramedics like myself; an effective pay cut bestowed upon us by his government while we were busy battling the pandemic.
We don’t want a pat on the back, we want a pay rise. If you group together the fact that NSW paramedics are the worst paid in the country, according to the Health Services Union, face vanishing affordable housing within decent proximity to our stations (a necessity with shift work), it’s no wonder we’re losing our talented workforce to other states. While we recently earned professional status after registration with the National Health Authority became compulsory in line with these other states, all it means practically is we now must pay an annual fee of $270 to our employer, the government, just to keep our jobs.
What it didn’t earn us, unlike other states, was a pay increase to align with the increased risk and responsibility we have but hey, “registered paramedic” sounds pretty impressive. I’m not sure how it helps the average punter while they wait hours for an ambulance.
Our unions have implemented a myriad campaigns to earn us professional recognition. But if we walk off the job, people die.
We don’t want to put a single patient at risk. We’re constrained by matters of conscience. It feels like we’re screaming but no one can hear us and, unfortunately, that’s what NSW Health count on.
We’re bleeding staff who’ve turned their back on the profession, which wouldn’t happen if the root cause was addressed – retaining paramedics through proper remuneration. Workers who feel appreciated are more likely to stick around, despite the many hazards the job brings.
If we get injured at work, we’re banished to the dreaded “base wage”, which means no more penalty rates, effectively halving our pay. It’s insult being added to injury. A decent paycheck should not rely on being forced to work extra hours on top of punishingly long shifts, missing meal breaks, the discomfort of ignoring nature’s call, not to mention the physical and mental health risks you take simply by turning up to work every day. We should not be penalised if we’re assaulted by a patient. Earning a living wage shouldn’t actively kill us.
Chris Minns’ Labor has vowed to scrap the wage cap if elected, which is a good start, but so much more needs to be done. Boosting paramedic numbers looks great on paper, but in the frenzy to hire record numbers of untrained recruits, the impact on the existing workforce continues to be ignored.
When a qualified paramedic is paired with a trainee, which is now almost always, they become their mentor. They gain the heavy responsibility of making critical decisions without an experienced partner to bounce off and ultimately bear the consequences of those decisions. It takes time and effort to teach clinical skills and write reports while trying to create a positive learning environment when we are at the end of our emotional tether and being harassed to respond to the next job. We feel burdened by the pressure to produce clinically sound, well rounded and mature paramedics in ever-shortening training periods while fighting off burnout. We are not qualified educators and, most importantly, we do not get paid a single dollar for the pleasure.
I struggle to think of another industry where an employee’s scope of responsibility can be changed so drastically at the whim of their employer, where they’re expected to act in a role they have no qualification for, where the results of these changes are literally life or death, yet their payslip never changes.
But, as usual, we will continue to slog it out because we’re not allowed to complain. The government lauds us as heroes yet treats us as triple zeros knowing that we’ll just grin and bear it.
Patrick Lukins is a paramedic, freelance writer, domestic violence officer and campaign director at Doctors 4 Refugees
