A woman in Calgary watched her husband bleed to death for an hour before an ambulance showed up because they had calls stacked up waiting and they couldn t keep her on the line. EMS worker Corey Porter joins the show to talk about the issue of timely medical service.
00:04:14.580And if they did have enough medics, they don't have enough ambulances anymore.
00:04:24.660Well, and then that's something you did bring up, I believe, again, at that town hall I went to, was the discipline on anybody who speaks up.
00:04:31.980Like, there's no real whistleblower legislation or anything to protect somebody from within the system.
00:04:35.880If they speak up, they find themselves out of a job, which only adds to the problem.
00:04:39.320Yep, yep, there's consequences for speaking up, and, you know, I guess that's why I've been riding this poor, tired old horse for going on 13 years lobbying for this, Corey.
00:04:51.200And you mean to tell me that there's not one manager, and I can't call them leaders, there's not one manager in AHS or EMS that's been able to come up with a single idea, a single solution going on 13 years to fix this?
00:05:11.020Corey, most of this stuff could be turned around in 24 hours if we had a leader, if we had some will, if we had a desire.
00:05:17.880It's difficult to change legislation, but they did it last week, they said we don't have enough staff, so boom, they decide that EMRs can now work ambulance, emergency medical responders can work with EMTs and paramedics and ambulance, because we don't have enough staff.
00:05:33.620If the will is there, if the will is there, it can happen overnight, that they spend so much time and energy maintaining this dysfunctional status quo, they can spend a fraction of that effort and fix it.
00:05:48.240Well, and then one of the things that even a lay person like me can see that I would think should be relatively easy to solve was, I mean, I wrote a column, I've written a number of columns on this over the last year and change.
00:06:01.300So for a picture for it, Nico's pulled it up a couple of times.
00:06:05.040I just pulled by the Rocky View Hospital.
00:06:06.620It was just a random time in the middle of the day to have a look.
00:06:08.740I pulled around back by the emergency area, and outside I could see, I believe, five or six ambulances all parked.
00:06:14.660And then within the enclosed garage area, it looked like there were possibly as many as half a dozen more sitting in there.
00:06:23.720So I can only assume there's paramedics associated with those ambulances all sitting around doing hallway care in that hospital rather than being out in the streets, taking care of people in emergency situations.
00:06:34.780Like, what is it going to take to force the issue to say, look, these aren't nurses.
00:07:24.700They know there's 30, 40 calls stacked up waiting for an ambulance to clear someplace to respond.
00:07:30.800And all you get from AHS and EMS is gaslighting.
00:07:34.400And you get them coming on media on a regular basis saying, you know, in spite of what you're hearing, we always have an ambulance available to respond.
00:07:44.280And you, lucky Albertan, get the closest ambulance.
00:07:46.800And the general public says, what's Porter talking about?
00:08:38.120And that's another issue that came up, too, is using ambulances, fully staffed, paramedics for non-emergent transportation of patients.
00:08:46.700Like, why is it impossible just to get a lightly equipped vehicle to move somebody rather than taking these specialized emergency vehicles off the streets?
00:08:56.900I hear things like that all the time, Corey, from people like yourself, people, non-EMS people come up with perfectly viable solutions.
00:09:04.680Heck, I see the other day that this AHS is leaning on the public for ideas on how to solve the EMS crisis.
00:09:13.080What the heck are we paying these managers, our supposed leaders, for?
00:09:17.500We're going to the public for ideas on how to fix this.
00:09:44.940But until you start using what we have appropriately, you don't know what you need.
00:09:49.280And you could put 50 more staffed ambulances on the road tomorrow, and the only thing that would result is you've got 50 more stacked up in a hospital hallway.
00:09:58.400Yeah, so I mean, it's a big problem with a bunch of levels, but I mean, is there then a short staffing in the hospital emergency areas for the hospital staff that's making them this reliant?
00:10:11.740It's mostly a bad issue, and I don't pretend to be an expert in the hospital problems.
00:10:17.260I've got a lot of ideas that could go towards solving some of that, but that's not my area of expertise.
00:10:24.540And EMS, I told management 13 years ago, I said, as long as you're willing to let those crews sit in the hospital hallway, nothing will change.
00:10:45.740And if EMS management did just that one thing today, it would be a huge step towards solving a lot of these issues.
00:10:56.140So dispatch is another area of debate going on right now and concern.
00:11:01.120And it sounds like with a recent incident, that was definitely something went wrong with dispatch and communication.
00:11:05.460So everybody's pointing their fingers at each other, and I've been finding it pretty repugnant watching them all play in the blame game,
00:11:10.440when right now we've got a person who needlessly died, and you should be seeking bloody solutions rather than trying to blame everybody for it.
00:11:16.580But something I'd heard before is one of the things with 911 that they will not and cannot tell you ever is how far away is help once you've called.
00:11:24.440Like, I'm just imagining if I were on the scene, and I had this poor woman bleeding to death in front of me, and I phone, and they said, well, it's going to be half an hour, you know what, I'll get the stains on my seat, I'll pack her in the back of my car,
00:11:35.980and drive her the eight minutes it was to Foothills Hospital so she can get treatment, rather than sit here and watch her bleed to death.
00:11:42.460Why not let citizens get a little proactive then in these cases, but they won't do it.
00:11:45.660As far as you know, there's always somebody one minute away.
00:11:48.960Yep, that's exactly, and there was a day when that was true, and those days are long gone, and that is something that we're pushing with our citizen action groups
00:11:58.160and different meetings we have is people, you need to have a plan B.
00:12:03.440You're right, the dispatchers should be telling you how far away that ambulance is, and giving you the option to, the opportunity to look after yourself.
00:12:14.120People, you need to have a plan B, because EMS cannot respond in a timely manner like we used to be able to.
00:12:24.660It just seems like a ridiculous rule, too, you know, I mean, why are you keeping people in the dark on something as simple as just how long is this emergency service going to be?
00:12:32.300It seems like more one of those butt-covering sorts of rules, rather than anything to help anybody else, just so people don't actually know how screwed up it is.
00:12:39.300Yep, the friend that I alluded to, that I responded to an hour, and that's about an hour and a half, he had a pulse and was breathing for 20 minutes after he went down.
00:13:35.420Even a person with the most rudimentary of first aid training knows that, I mean, just time is of the essence in a number of life-threatening scenarios that can be easily solved with the right resources.
00:13:50.060I mean, these are things that your average layperson on the street might not be able to do something about, but an ambulance can very readily, you know, stabilize somebody.
00:13:58.520But if they're waiting too bloody long, then there's no point.
00:16:51.920But people need to understand when Calgary's in code red with no ambulances, you can be guaranteed there's not an available ambulance within probably 100 kilometers outside of Calgary.
00:17:03.240Because they've all been sucked into the city and are sitting in hospital hallways or doing calls in the city.