Western Standard - EXCLUSIVE： George Porter veteran Alberta paramedic on challenges to ambulance service

00:00:00.000 Thank you very much for joining us today, Mr. Porter.

00:00:02.460 Well, thank you, Corey. I appreciate your interest in this and keeping it front and center and having me here.

00:00:10.240 Yeah, so I mean, I do want to stay, like we had a recent tragedy that's kind of brought ambulance services to the fore,

00:00:16.320 but we're still finding out details, so we'll kind of stay out of those weeds.

00:00:19.260 I mean, it might have been a dispatch issue. It might have been a number of things that happened there.

00:00:23.280 There's certainly some investigation has to happen because something clearly went terribly wrong and had the worst possible outcome.

00:00:28.360 But it's brought the issue of timely medical service to the forefront, which if you could look at it as a positive development in a sense,

00:00:38.440 now's the time to get out there and talk to people and make them realize that we're all this vulnerable

00:00:42.060 and we very soon could see another tragedy like this as somebody dies waiting for medical service.

00:00:47.960 Well, Corey, people need to understand that this is not an isolated incident.

00:00:54.060 These things are happening on a regular basis.

00:00:55.960 It's been just a short while ago, a woman in Calgary watched her husband bleed to death for an hour before an ambulance showed up.

00:01:07.320 They disconnected a call because they had calls stacked up waiting and they couldn't keep her on the line,

00:01:13.040 so they did an emergency disconnect.

00:01:15.860 I've responded to one myself.

00:01:18.540 My longest response time is an hour and 17 minutes for a chest pain collapse.

00:01:23.040 It turned out to be an old friend of mine, and yeah, it's been a few years ago.

00:01:28.020 And so these things are going on on a regular basis.

00:01:30.240 It's just ones like this that tend to hit the media and become an issue.

00:01:37.560 And Alberta Health and EMS management response is, you know, it's when you don't have an excuse

00:01:44.300 or when you don't have a solution, Corey, you make excuses.

00:01:47.600 And that's all we've seen for years, years.

00:01:52.580 Well, and the frustrating part is, though, there are solutions, and you've been proposing solutions,

00:01:56.460 and they don't want to hear them.

00:01:58.500 I mean, there's some aspects that come up, you know, from how they did change and centralize the authorities,

00:02:04.680 so suddenly rural ambulances are being all drawn into the urban centers and leaving us without coverage.

00:02:08.920 Well, we didn't have a problem before.

00:02:11.020 The solution is go back to when it was working.

00:02:13.220 I mean, that's one of the ones I think we could kind of work towards.

00:02:16.280 If we had something, it wasn't broke, they tried to fix it, and now we're stranded.

00:02:21.280 Show me any government program that runs effectively and efficiently.

00:02:26.340 And this is certainly part of that.

00:02:30.940 We are far, we used to be cutting edge.

00:02:34.340 We used to be leading edge in EMS in this province, and we can't even keep up.

00:02:40.080 It's just been so frustrating and discouraging to see the failures and how far down this has fallen with no action.

00:02:48.780 We have no leadership.

00:02:49.780 We have no leadership in EMS.

00:02:51.460 We have no leadership in Alberta Health Services.

00:02:55.420 All we get is excuses and stats, and, well, you know, you can make stats say anything you want, but nobody does anything.

00:03:03.880 Nobody will stand up and do the right thing for the staff or for patient care.

00:03:10.780 And that's exacerbating the problem.

00:03:12.580 I mean, we're even hearing from other facets saying, oh, we just need more money.

00:03:15.820 We need more resources because we're shorthanded.

00:03:17.940 Well, there's some truth to that, but they're wearing out existing paramedics through this.

00:03:23.380 Because I imagine the stress of being in such a broken system, I mean, isn't keeping staff retention very high.

00:03:30.720 Oh, we have, last I heard was 42% of the medics are booked off.

00:03:35.820 A lot of them, they're just exhausted.

00:03:38.380 They're worn out, you know, and HSEMS comes on the news once in a while, pats everybody on the head, says how much they love the medics.

00:03:46.200 Aren't they wonderful?

00:03:46.880 But they don't have their back, and the medics know that.

00:03:50.280 And we've had a few brave medics that stand up and even use an AHS's own data, and they get suspended.

00:04:00.420 And one of them, while he's suspended for a week, his ambulance is out of service because they've got no staff to man it.

00:04:07.860 We've got 350, 400 shifts a week in this province that are uncovered.

00:04:13.520 They don't have enough medics.

00:04:14.580 And if they did have enough medics, they don't have enough ambulances anymore.

00:04:24.660 Well, 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.

00:04:31.980 Like, there's no real whistleblower legislation or anything to protect somebody from within the system.

00:04:35.880 If they speak up, they find themselves out of a job, which only adds to the problem.

00:04:39.320 Yep, 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.

00:04:51.200 And 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?

00:05:11.020 Corey, 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.

00:05:17.880 It'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.

00:05:33.620 If 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.

00:05:48.240 Well, 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.

00:06:01.300 So for a picture for it, Nico's pulled it up a couple of times.

00:06:05.040 I just pulled by the Rocky View Hospital.

00:06:06.620 It was just a random time in the middle of the day to have a look.

00:06:08.740 I pulled around back by the emergency area, and outside I could see, I believe, five or six ambulances all parked.

00:06:14.660 And then within the enclosed garage area, it looked like there were possibly as many as half a dozen more sitting in there.

00:06:19.680 And that's not an ambulance depot.

00:06:21.720 That's not a storage spot.

00:06:22.620 That's an emergency department.

00:06:23.720 So 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.

00:06:34.780 Like, what is it going to take to force the issue to say, look, these aren't nurses. 0.99

00:06:39.480 These aren't doctors.

00:06:40.280 These are emergency care professionals.

00:06:42.340 Take these patients and let them get back to work.

00:06:45.280 They say the medics can't leave because that's potentially patient abandonment.

00:06:50.220 Well, Corey, those people are in the safest place they can be.

00:06:52.740 They're in a tertiary care facility.

00:06:55.400 We do have a patient abandonment issue, and that's the patients that are calling 911 and waiting for that elusive ambulance to show up.

00:07:03.680 Those are the patients that are being abandoned.

00:07:06.480 Those are the patients that we have no business.

00:07:08.800 EMS has no business treating patients in a hospital hallway.

00:07:13.100 That's not our job.

00:07:14.800 We don't have the resources.

00:07:16.900 And when we're doing that, we can't be out on the street where we're supposed to be.

00:07:21.560 And those are moral injuries for these medics.

00:07:23.640 They know what's going on.

00:07:24.700 They know there's 30, 40 calls stacked up waiting for an ambulance to clear someplace to respond.

00:07:30.800 And all you get from AHS and EMS is gaslighting.

00:07:34.400 And 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.

00:07:44.280 And you, lucky Albertan, get the closest ambulance.

00:07:46.800 And the general public says, what's Porter talking about?

00:07:51.200 Everything's good.

00:07:52.500 It's true.

00:07:53.460 We do have an ambulance available to respond to Calgary right now, even though they might be in code red.

00:07:59.100 But that nearest available ambulance might be Fort McMurray.

00:08:02.760 And we're seeing response times more and more and more, an hour, two hours.

00:08:09.840 Last one I'm aware of was an ambulance dispatch from three hours and 20 minutes away to respond to an emergency in Edmonton.

00:08:17.720 We see ambulances in Lethbridge responding to emergencies in Calgary.

00:08:21.200 I've seen so many times when there's not a single ambulance available to respond between area Crossfield and Lethbridge.

00:08:30.880 There's routine transfers.

00:08:32.560 They're stuck in a hospital hallway someplace.

00:08:34.980 It's absolutely asinine.

00:08:38.120 And that's another issue that came up, too, is using ambulances, fully staffed, paramedics for non-emergent transportation of patients.

00:08:46.700 Like, why is it impossible just to get a lightly equipped vehicle to move somebody rather than taking these specialized emergency vehicles off the streets?

00:08:56.900 I hear things like that all the time, Corey, from people like yourself, people, non-EMS people come up with perfectly viable solutions.

00:09:04.680 Heck, I see the other day that this AHS is leaning on the public for ideas on how to solve the EMS crisis.

00:09:13.080 What the heck are we paying these managers, our supposed leaders, for?

00:09:17.500 We're going to the public for ideas on how to fix this.

00:09:21.600 We have to form a committee.

00:09:23.260 We have to form task forces.

00:09:24.900 We have to have studies to figure out how to solve this.

00:09:28.440 It's plain as the day is long, Corey.

00:09:31.180 Get those crews out of the hospital hallways so they can do their job.

00:09:35.980 Quit using ambulances inappropriately.

00:09:38.020 I mean, the union solution to everything is, well, we need more ambulances, we need more medics.

00:09:43.700 Likely we do.

00:09:44.940 But until you start using what we have appropriately, you don't know what you need.

00:09:49.280 And 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.

00:09:58.400 Yeah, 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?

00:10:11.740 It's mostly a bad issue, and I don't pretend to be an expert in the hospital problems.

00:10:17.260 I've got a lot of ideas that could go towards solving some of that, but that's not my area of expertise.

00:10:24.540 And 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.

00:10:35.140 Why would it?

00:10:35.760 Why would the hospital do anything different if you're covering their shortcomings, their shortfall?

00:10:42.400 We have no business being there.

00:10:44.180 We have no business being there.

00:10:45.740 And if EMS management did just that one thing today, it would be a huge step towards solving a lot of these issues.

00:10:56.140 So dispatch is another area of debate going on right now and concern.

00:11:01.120 And it sounds like with a recent incident, that was definitely something went wrong with dispatch and communication.

00:11:05.460 So everybody's pointing their fingers at each other, and I've been finding it pretty repugnant watching them all play in the blame game,

00:11:10.440 when 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.

00:11:16.580 But 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.

00:11:24.440 Like, 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, 0.98

00:11:35.980 and 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. 0.97

00:11:42.460 Why not let citizens get a little proactive then in these cases, but they won't do it.

00:11:45.660 As far as you know, there's always somebody one minute away.

00:11:48.960 Yep, 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

00:11:58.160 and different meetings we have is people, you need to have a plan B.

00:12:03.440 You'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.

00:12:14.120 People, you need to have a plan B, because EMS cannot respond in a timely manner like we used to be able to.

00:12:24.660 It 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?

00:12:32.300 It 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.

00:12:39.300 Yep, 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.

00:12:48.060 They repeatedly called dispatch.

00:12:50.120 You know, so we just put him in the van, take him to the hospital, we're 20 minutes away.

00:12:54.200 And they said, nope, the ambulance is on its way, knowing that I was well over an hour away from that location.

00:13:00.280 And we got people, we got ambulance crews responding, lights and siren, ridiculous distances.

00:13:09.840 I got a text the other day from a girl who was in tears, responding over an hour away for a cardiac arrest.

00:13:16.020 They're doing CPR on this guy.

00:13:17.420 That's putting these crews at risk, driving high-speed lights and siren.

00:13:22.740 It's putting other motorists on the road at risk.

00:13:25.440 For what?

00:13:26.520 What are you going to do when you get there an hour and 20, hour and 10 minutes later?

00:13:31.520 It's absolutely asinine.

00:13:35.420 Even 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.

00:13:45.980 I mean, anaphylactic shock, cardiac issues, bleeding.

00:13:50.060 I 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.

00:13:58.520 But if they're waiting too bloody long, then there's no point.

00:14:01.500 Yeah.

00:14:01.780 What are we doing?

00:14:02.540 Why are we even responding to things like that?

00:14:05.940 And, you know, as crass as it sounds, as I said, you know, you guys need to phone your supervisor.

00:14:11.300 Tell dispatch you're not going.

00:14:13.340 Like, send the funeral home, as harsh as that is, because that's the reality of it.

00:14:18.960 And, you know, this poor gal that had the dog attack, and I feel so bad for that and so angry when I heard that.

00:14:30.940 And you're right.

00:14:31.920 There's lots of finger-pointing.

00:14:33.560 So release the tapes.

00:14:36.400 Release the time shots.

00:14:38.580 You know, why not?

00:14:41.200 Yeah.

00:14:41.640 Well, maybe it's time.

00:14:42.600 And that's one of the things is demand our provincial leaders.

00:14:44.780 That's one of the things they can do is start a real investigation, not an internal one.

00:14:49.820 Let's have a task force.

00:14:51.040 Get on this bloody thing.

00:14:52.360 You know, subpoena those sorts of things.

00:14:54.020 Let's expose it.

00:14:54.840 Well, Minister Copping announces that AHS investigated themselves on this, and he's happy to announce that we didn't do anything wrong.

00:15:03.320 Everything's good.

00:15:03.860 And so that gets swept under the carpet, like all these other terrible tragedies that have happened, and we continue doing nothing.

00:15:13.260 There needs to be a post-cleaning.

00:15:14.740 And I can tell the frustration in your voice.

00:15:18.020 And it's with all of us.

00:15:19.520 But I mean, as I said kind of at the start, I mean, still, we've got to keep trying.

00:15:22.960 I mean, we'd love to win otherwise.

00:15:25.720 And right now, they are in the middle of a leadership race.

00:15:27.520 It's one of the few times that you get a bunch of them actually paying a little bit of attention.

00:15:30.360 So hopefully some people can make this an issue with those candidates and say, hey, take a stance on this.

00:15:36.820 Let's document your stance on it.

00:15:38.820 Let's get your word on this, because we're going to follow up on it.

00:15:41.640 And let's change this damn mess, because this is just not acceptable, and it's ridiculous.

00:15:45.640 And enough studies, enough committees, enough, enough, enough.

00:15:50.720 Just do what needs to be done.

00:15:53.640 It's simple.

00:15:55.020 This could be, as I said before, this could be corrected in no time, could be turned around.

00:15:59.200 And just, if we had some leadership, we have no leadership at any level.

00:16:05.920 Well, I'll be interviewing probably most, if not all, the candidates over the next couple of months for the leadership.

00:16:10.960 And you can rest assured, I'll be bringing this one up with them.

00:16:13.760 Is there more you're going to be doing with your organization?

00:16:15.940 Like, where can people find information on how they can try to take part and keep this issue alive and make some change?

00:16:22.700 A lot of communities, particularly around Calgary, have citizen action committees, citizen action groups.

00:16:29.200 Some are very active.

00:16:30.360 Cochran, you had Brian Winters on your show here a while back.

00:16:34.460 You guys did a wonderful job on that program.

00:16:37.500 Brian's a good guy to contact Cochran.

00:16:40.820 People need to understand that when, you know, they talk about code reds when Calgary doesn't have any ambulances available to respond.

00:16:49.000 Nobody talks about rural code reds.

00:16:51.920 But 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.

00:17:03.240 Because they've all been sucked into the city and are sitting in hospital hallways or doing calls in the city.

00:17:08.700 It's not just an urban problem.

00:17:12.020 Well, I'm well aware of it.

00:17:13.340 That's why you see these things where your whole southern half of Alberta has got no available ambulance to respond.

00:17:18.900 Yeah.

00:17:19.140 I live in Prittis and our ambulance is basically seems to come back to town for oil changes and then goes back to the city.

00:17:25.700 Yeah.

00:17:26.540 Yeah.

00:17:26.840 You're absolutely right.

Western Standard - June 12, 2022

EXCLUSIVE： George Porter veteran Alberta paramedic on challenges to ambulance service

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