The paramedic said she had been ill days before the union’s lawsuit because she faced a “moral dilemma” during the strike.
Sheffield’s Kate Pitfield said ambulance trusts across the country are no longer able to provide emergency care and staff are constantly apologizing to patients who wait hours after calling 911.
In a tweet dated December 19, she said: “I plan to go on strike on Wednesday. I love my job and want to take care of my patients. The moral dilemma over whether or not to go on strike is quite insurmountable. I’ve spent the last three weekends worrying about the aftermath of the strike and working in appalling conditions.
However, we do not currently offer an emergency service. I visited an elderly patient with a fractured femur who had been waiting six hours for throbbing chest pains and five hours waiting for an ambulance. We constantly apologize for the waiting time at our place and at the hospital.”
Ms Pitfield, who works for the Yorkshire ambulance service, said she worked four 12-hour shifts plus overtime last week but saw only 14 patients.
“I stood in line at hospitals for 18 hours. I was 3.5 hours late for a 12-hour shift, which is not safe for me or my colleagues to do at home,” she said.
“None of us wants anything to happen to our patients, but it has already happened. We need higher pay to have better and safer staff, retain the best staff, and be able to provide real emergency assistance. Nurses really need it too, they are wonderful and are about to break.
Ben Clark, a paramedic with the Southwestern Ambulance Service, said he was on strike to “defend the NHS.”
He said: “This has been going on without a break for five or six years now. No downtime. You don’t have to wait for the phone to ring. Now the waiting time outside the hospital is so long that we are actually working less than ever because we are stuck with a patient for five, six, seven, ten, 12 hours while people wait helplessly outside. ”
When Health Secretary Steve Barclay said Wednesday’s emergency workers’ strike put lives at risk, Mr Clarke said: “The last six to seven years of life have been at risk. Especially in the last eight to nine months, we don’t have strokes or heart attacks.”
Mr Clarke added: “Covid has been an exception. We first saw winter pressure in the summer before the pandemic. This is the result of the cut. This is a political decision. They want to destabilize and discredit the NHS so that the public will lose faith in it so they can dismantle it and sell it to their friends.”
Tens of thousands of ambulance workers, including paramedics and ambulance workers, have gone on strike across much of England and Wales over wages and benefits. The impact will vary by region, but widespread disruption is expected and NHS leaders have warned that patient safety is at risk.
Eddie Brand, 57, a paramedic and Unison department secretary at the London Ambulance Service, said conditions for workers were at an all-time low and many were looking for help to pay their bills.
He said: “Covid has been pretty tough, we lost members and stuff like that. With delays, loitering, queues at hospitals and a lack of social assistance, we just find work very difficult and just feel unfair.”
Mr Brand said working conditions are currently “the worst in his 36 years of service.” “People are fed up with it. People are worried and people are not allowed to do the work they are paid to do.”
He said some were £15,000 in debt after spending three years at the university only to wait eight hours in the hallway to discharge patients. “It’s wrong, they want to work.”
The Unison chapter secretary said that “a growing number of members” are also reaching out to the union’s social department for support. “They cannot pay their bills, they have problems with their daily lives. It gets harder. () The cost of living crisis is (growing), fuel prices are rising, mortgage prices are rising, and they are turning to us for help.”
A paramedic in Nottinghamshire said patients’ lives were in danger “for longer than these strikes were supposed” after Wednesday’s NHS strike. Tom, 33, who declined to give his last name, worked as a paramedic with the East Midlands Ambulance Service for five years and said he would go on strike if he was on duty.
“I have visited elderly patients who have been lying on the floor with broken hips for more than 20 hours. They waited so long for their limbs to become necrotic (tissue die off), which led to major surgery to remove those limbs,” he said.
“For 14 hours, I myself saw and cared for the sick and had no peace … And at some point, 11 ambulances got stuck in the hospital, which could not be pulled out into the street.
“The conditions in which we regularly work do not allow us to fully do the work that we want to do and put the lives of patients at risk long before strikes were even thought of … Because of these delays, we regularly go to 12 , 13, 14, 15, 16 hours without a break or even without infusion or hot food or no food at all.
“The ambulance strike had little effect on the big picture, but hopefully had a big impact in bringing attention to the already failing NHS that we so desperately need to develop and invest in.”
Source: I News
I’m Raymond Molina, a professional writer and journalist with over 5 years of experience in the media industry. I currently work for 24 News Reporters, where I write for the health section of their news website. In my role, I am responsible for researching and writing stories on current health trends and issues. My articles are often seen as thought-provoking pieces that provide valuable insight into the state of society’s wellbeing.