EMAS parademics talk us through their 12-hour shift

Transcript

00:00 So what we're seeing in A&Es at the moment is challenging.

00:03 We're unable to hand over our patients to hospitals as quickly as we'd like.

00:10 The whole system is in itself a bottleneck.

00:13 There's a bottleneck at the one end and the other,

00:16 and so patients are suffering the consequences of that,

00:21 which is time delays in their care.

00:23 Looking after patients for hours on end in corridors that aren't fully equipped,

00:27 it's challenging and I think the biggest frustration is that we can see people deteriorating in those settings

00:36 and the reality is that someone that may have been seen earlier might have had a better outcome.

00:42 To see it in the patients' faces when they've been waiting, it can be quite a soul destroyer

00:46 because we're equipped and we're trained in providing life-sustaining care

00:55 and when we're so badly stretched it's sometimes much more difficult to provide that level of care that we'd like to.

01:03 If we can't get to them quick enough they can care more poorly,

01:09 it can become more life-threatening depending on the nature of the call.

01:15 All of the waits are in detriment to the patient.

01:18 Again, everybody is working tirelessly within the hospital, within the ambulance service,

01:25 to provide the best care to the patients.

01:27 There is a simple fix to it, I think it involves a lot of different agencies,

01:32 a lot of different systems to implement to get a significant change, but I don't know.

01:39 I do love my job, it offers such variety, it's such insight to people's lives.

01:45 You do make a difference, whether it be the small things like putting in a care package to patients,

01:50 which again isn't a time critical thing but it does affect the patient's life as a whole.

01:56 And also you do get the time critical jobs where you are providing life-saving interventions

02:01 and making a difference to whether somebody lives or dies.

02:05 So you get such a variety of things within one day, it's never the same and it is interesting.

02:13 [ Silence ]