Western Standard - Retired paramedic Don Sharpe on Alberta's EMS crisis

00:00:00.000 Thanks for joining me today, Don. Good to see you again.

00:00:01.920 Corey, it's a pleasure. We've worked together before on other projects, and it's good to be

00:00:06.080 here to talk to you about this. Yes. Well, and this is certainly one you're, you know,

00:00:09.660 professionally inclined towards. You've put a lifetime into this. Maybe, you know, in a nutshell,

00:00:14.840 if you just want to start on what your initiative has been lately. I mean, people know there's a

00:00:18.020 crisis, but you're working towards a solution. So, you know, we'll work onto that. I've already set

00:00:21.360 up the problem. Right. So you're correct. I'm here appearing after I've retired. And part of me

00:00:27.440 is chagrined a little bit about that. I would have liked to have spoken up more when I

00:00:31.580 was working for HS, but I was really working hard inside the machine to try to solve these problems.

00:00:37.040 Starting in 2012, I started researching and writing papers, making suggestions,

00:00:41.140 trying to make improvements to what I thought were the problems.

00:00:44.620 Hallway waits in the hospital, big crisis, and we're not helping. Paramedics waiting in the

00:00:49.920 hospital hallways are not helping solve the problem. We're a simple band-aid solution. It's not working.

00:00:54.980 Flexing ambulances from the rural communities into the city to cover a city problem. You hear

00:01:01.860 AHS all the time say, well, we've had a 30% increase in call volume. Well, wait a sec. Look

00:01:06.740 at the stats. That 30% increase in call volume is in the urban centers. That's not in the rural

00:01:12.060 communities. So is it fair to take the rural ambulances, literally all of them, and bring

00:01:17.480 them out of those rural communities where they take care of their own friends and neighbors

00:01:22.240 and move them to the city to solve a problem just because AHS can't solve it? I disagree with all

00:01:27.040 of these. And a lot of the work I did is publicly available. You simply have to research my name and

00:01:32.000 hallway waits or end hallway waiting and you'll find it, so. Well, that's a very large component of it. I

00:01:39.920 wrote on that in past columns. I went just to check for myself. I pulled outside of the rocky view,

00:01:44.000 and there's a big, you know, area with the garages for the, and that was packed with ambulances. And

00:01:48.800 there are six more sitting in an outside parking lot. So these are all a whole bunch of specialized,

00:01:52.720 expensive machines. I assume they had personnel that went with them. Oh yeah. And they're all

00:01:56.560 sitting in a hospital instead of being out and about and theoretically bringing people in.

00:02:01.200 Yes, desperately wrong. I mean, it not only creates delays for patients waiting for care

00:02:06.480 in the community, but it creates a moral injury for the paramedics who are in the hallway knowing

00:02:12.160 that they're literally being held hostage by the healthcare system, not able to treat the guy who's

00:02:17.760 trapped in a vehicle upside down, or the guy who fell off his roof, or the construction worker who's

00:02:23.360 in a basement and can't get out. I mean, you know, it puts a burden on the other emergency services too.

00:02:28.640 Fire departments end up staying on scene longer waiting for us. Police officers transporting our

00:02:33.840 patients that are critically ill, and they wait and they wait and they wait on scene until finally

00:02:39.040 they say, you know, we can't wait any longer. We got to get this guy to the hospital. There's just

00:02:43.280 been so many occasions, so many occurrences. It's really been frustrating. And it seems like no matter

00:02:49.360 how many times we tell them this isn't working, they don't seem to be able to solve those basic issues

00:02:56.720 and fix what's wrong. Oh, and we've said for quite a while, you know, the language was somebody's

00:03:01.600 going to die eventually. I mean, it's at the point people have died now. I mean, some of them are,

00:03:05.280 you can never say 100%, but it's looking very likely. In the circumstance, one that really caught

00:03:10.240 a lot of people's attention was last summer with that elderly woman who was attacked by the dogs.

00:03:15.200 She was only nine minutes from the largest hospital in Alberta. And she bled out waiting over 40 minutes to

00:03:21.440 to get ambulance service to get her back to that hospital, very possibly could have had her life saved.

00:03:27.680 And how many ambulances were sitting stuck in hallways while this poor woman died? Well, I think

00:03:32.960 there was actually a news report on that. I think there were 18 ambulances that were stuck in the

00:03:37.040 hallway when that incident occurred. We're waiting for the report to come out and find out exactly who

00:03:41.840 phoned and said what and what ambulance was sent when. But again, you know, we talk about in these

00:03:47.440 community meetings and in these town halls, we talk about people needing to have a plan B.

00:03:51.920 They need to have an auction phone 911 certainly, but don't then turn your brain off and wait an hour

00:03:57.920 before you put something in a private vehicle and go. This particular case of this poor woman who was 1.00

00:04:03.760 chewed up by these dogs, you know, she sat in that hall or in that alley, I think for 30 or 35 minutes.

00:04:09.920 Now, if somebody had put her immediately into a vehicle and driven her to the hospital,

00:04:14.720 would she have survived? I don't know. But she wasn't given the chance.

00:04:19.520 Having sitting with her in the alley for 35 minutes robbed her of that chance to survive.

00:04:26.080 And there've been multiple cases and some of them were talked about in the documentary.

00:04:29.840 That long response for that young man who was traumatically injured and the police ended up

00:04:34.800 taking a very tragic call. How do you fix that?

00:04:38.320 And when you start tapping into other emergency services as they want to help and save a life,

00:04:43.840 the police are taking people in the hospital. Firefighters are transported people to hospital.

00:04:46.960 But meanwhile, their specialized skills now are lacking. You might have a crime in progress.

00:04:51.040 There's no police officers available because they're taking people to the hospital or a building

00:04:54.480 is burning down, but the fire truck is busy transporting somebody to the hospital.

00:04:58.080 Like this is a chain reaction that's making us unsafe on many levels.

00:05:00.880 Right. And a lot of these other emergency services, our sister brother services have been

00:05:09.040 tasked with this and they've tried to find solutions. Police officers get stuck in the hallway,

00:05:13.680 with patients too. And I've seen police officers listening and I say, what's going on? They say,

00:05:18.800 well, there's a car chase guy with a gun right outside the hospital here. And I go,

00:05:22.880 you can, can't you go? And he, well, no, I got to look after this patient here with a psychiatric

00:05:27.600 emergency. And I'll say, well, I'll take them. No, I can't do that. They have to stay. I mean,

00:05:31.840 it's, they've actually tried to get out of this hallway waiting thing as well. There are peace officers in

00:05:37.280 the hospital who could take over care of these patients. But again, the hospital is not interested

00:05:42.320 in solving this problem. If it creates more work for them, they're happy to keep using other

00:05:48.320 emergency services to bandaid this problem. And it's, I'm finished as part of the machine trying

00:05:56.400 to fix it from inside. We're going at it from another direction now.

00:05:59.920 Yeah. So getting to that other direction, well, I mean, in some assets, you want to see it fixed,

00:06:03.760 but the other thing is reminding people, we still have our civic duty to each other. I mean, don't,

00:06:08.400 you know, I think it's been trained, trained into it for so long that everything is the state's

00:06:14.080 responsibility. If my neighbor gets hurt, I need to call whatever authority and deal with it. Or if my

00:06:18.480 neighbor is being robbed and need to call the police, I don't dare intervene with the mugger.

00:06:22.080 And we've lost that community and it's wrong. I mean, use some common sense. If the ambulance can

00:06:28.320 get there fast, great. But in the meantime, see what you can do. I mean, you know, there's so many

00:06:32.640 times now, like I said, don't turn your brain off, call 911. But let's say your, your wife or your

00:06:37.520 husband has a, your grandfather has a stroke, obvious left-sided facial droop, weakness, slurred

00:06:44.480 speech. That's a time dependent medical emergency that doesn't need pre-hospital care. Paramedics are going

00:06:50.880 to arrive and treat him very gently. And if he gets suddenly worse, they're going to be able,

00:06:54.240 but if he remains at home for longer than an hour with those stroke system symptoms and the window

00:07:00.480 closes, it makes it very likely he could have permanent deficits. So if you recognize a call

00:07:07.040 or a problem, a medical problem, and you understand that, you know what, he doesn't need a paramedic,

00:07:13.280 let's get him in a car, have a pre-plan, have neighbors that you've talked to and said,

00:07:18.320 you know, if something happens at my house, I can't get an ambulance. Can you come over and

00:07:22.240 give me a hand and get granddad into the car? Phone him, get him into a vehicle, drive him to

00:07:26.240 the hospital. It actually will make a difference to the outcome of that patient. So that's what we're

00:07:31.360 telling people now in these community meetings. And Prentice the other night was a great example.

00:07:35.360 Yeah. Well, and just some rudimentary common sense training. A person doesn't need to be a

00:07:38.800 paramedic to know some of the basics. If it's a bleeder, get some pressure on it if you can. 1.00

00:07:43.440 Yeah. You know, things such as that. AEDs are becoming quite commonplace and they have nice,

00:07:49.760 simple instructions to guide you through. I mean, if a person's having a cardiac event,

00:07:54.240 maybe you could do something again while waiting, but don't just stand there.

00:07:57.680 Boy, I wish it would get here sooner. Yeah. So we're recommending in these town

00:08:00.960 hall meetings and these community association meetings, get trained, form a local citizen action

00:08:06.720 group. And we've got 18 of them now in Southern Alberta, groups of citizens in these different

00:08:12.160 towns who understand a little better now what the problem really is. I mean, they've always wondered,

00:08:17.440 they heard about, you know, these long response times and there's not an ambulance in town.

00:08:21.360 They couldn't figure out why. Well, we spend hours talking about that and discussing why,

00:08:26.960 and we connect them with other people who understand it. And they bring in guest speakers

00:08:31.120 and they align themselves with first aid training organizations that come in and train everybody

00:08:35.760 in first aid and CPR. So the people are now better informed and better able to make those decisions

00:08:40.640 when, when a medical emergency occurs. Of course, there's going to be times where you can't move

00:08:45.040 somebody. You've got to have a paramedic attend. Wouldn't it be nice if you could be certain they'd

00:08:49.680 be there in those situations, but time and again, we're finding they're not. Well, with some of that

00:08:54.880 confidence, maybe some people will be less inclined to call 911 in situations where perhaps it didn't

00:08:59.680 warrant that. Yeah. You know, if your kid fell off the monkey bars and broke their arm, I'm using that

00:09:04.480 example because I remember a niece that happened with once with an ex of mine and it was horrible

00:09:09.920 looking. It was frightening and her arm was all crooked, but she's a young kid and she was in

00:09:13.760 pain, but you know, we drove her to the hospital. She was fine. It didn't need an ambulance. Right.

00:09:17.360 But now the first thing is to call 911. Well, hang on. Maybe, you know, I'm so old that I remember back

00:09:23.280 in the late eighties, early nineties, when the motto for EMS was don't guess, don't guess, call EMS.

00:09:29.920 And now we're telling people, you know, maybe take a few minutes and just try and figure out if you

00:09:35.760 really do need an ambulance. Studies show, and I've done a lot of research and training in dispatch.

00:09:41.200 So I understand how dispatch works. Studies show that people in a critical medical emergency still

00:09:46.080 spend one or two minutes running around trying to solve the problem themselves. Grandpa chokes at the

00:09:50.560 dinner table. Grandpa, are you okay? Are you okay? Can you breathe? Hey, somebody, come here. Grandpa's

00:09:55.600 you might end up on the floor two minutes later before somebody actually says, we got to call an

00:09:59.200 ambulance. Well, that's a situation where you're probably going to need some professional help.

00:10:04.320 Wouldn't it be nice if it was available? So yes, I agree. Let's take a look at these minor situations.

00:10:10.400 You've talked to any paramedic, you know, and say, what is the silliest call? What's the biggest

00:10:15.280 waste of time you ever drove across the city for? They'll have 10 stories of people who called for

00:10:20.240 completely inappropriate things. It's difficult. Again, with confidence and judgment is the main

00:10:25.920 thing. I mean, we don't, we also don't want people, Hey, you know, you're 55 years old and

00:10:28.880 you've got a heavy duty chest pain coming on your arms numb. You'll be fine. Call somebody to help out.

00:10:34.560 Of course. But, uh, you know, again, if you've had a little bit of training time to think about,

00:10:38.640 or even a preplan in your head, maybe you're more prepared to ration that through and raise it.

00:10:42.000 No, this is really an emergency. I better call somebody. Again, I talk to so many people every day

00:10:46.720 who say, I had no idea it was this bad. And you know, cause you've written about this problem for

00:10:51.360 years, you, and I've tried to speak about it and, and get it on the radar. Uh, but again,

00:10:57.360 everybody's afraid to talk about it, uh, who works in AHS and other people who even have an experience,

00:11:03.040 a bad experience with EMS. They just want to forget it ever happened. Well, it's personal.

00:11:07.120 They don't want to continue. They don't want to make, you know, cause it sounds like maybe they

00:11:11.520 made a mistake and look at that dog bite call. It's still got people who are concerned being told,

00:11:16.480 well, maybe it didn't sound, you know, worried enough. Scream and panic enough on the phone.

00:11:21.760 That's not her job. You know, that's the dispatcher's job. 1.00

00:11:25.680 Yeah. So part of your approach is twofold. You know, it's, it's letting people know,

00:11:28.560 Hey, you can take care of yourselves, but at the same time, you also want to advocate because

00:11:31.760 we've got something that's broken and something has come up a couple of times. Somebody also brought

00:11:35.200 up the friends of Medicare and pointing out anybody who dares challenge the status quo,

00:11:38.880 you are going to get the unions. You're going to get the AHS established, but they're going to come down

00:11:43.040 and they're going to say, Oh, you want to ruin healthcare. You want to tear down our universality.

00:11:47.520 We've heard all the usual arguments against it, but how can we push back? How can we get our

00:11:52.080 politicians the courage to say, yes, we have to change the system. It's not working.

00:11:56.640 Okay. So recognizing that healthcare starts in your community and reading relevant news articles,

00:12:03.520 Sean Watley produced a really good article a couple of weeks ago. He talked about healthcare is not a

00:12:07.760 right. It's an obligation. And I encourage everybody to find that article by Sean and read

00:12:12.720 about, change your perspective about what healthcare is and recognize that your family,

00:12:20.160 your loved ones, their access to healthcare is up to you. I wouldn't go to a hospital right now.

00:12:26.240 I wouldn't. And I tell my friends, don't go without an advocate.

00:12:30.160 Make sure you have somebody there who can walk you through it. But for the most part,

00:12:33.760 we just try to inform people. We're not trying to blame anybody. Although believe me,

00:12:38.480 you know, the blame belongs on the big machine, right? That refuses to change and lies. They don't

00:12:44.720 tell the truth. And we've caught them in lies time and again. So find out what the truth is. Understand

00:12:50.960 that in a lot of cases, it's up to you. Rely on your friends and neighbors and let's get these citizen

00:12:55.120 action groups together and try to make a difference. That's my goal. Yeah. And that was a striking

00:12:59.680 point in the documentary where the fellow from AHS saying, no, we don't discipline anybody

00:13:05.760 for speaking up, you know, if they've seen concerns and they have problems within the system. And then

00:13:09.600 should they cut right over to a paramedic and showed, no, he's been repeatedly disciplined

00:13:13.360 for daring. So, I mean, they just lied ball-faced to Kathy Lee during the documentary.

00:13:17.520 Yeah. I mean, in the paramedic community, that's an open secret that they're just not dealing with

00:13:22.400 this at all. And there's, again, they have some more things coming down the pike. I got a call

00:13:28.080 this morning from a paramedic. He said, they're planning to do a city-wide pick, which means

00:13:33.040 they're going to allow paramedics to pick any ambulance they want, but there's not going to be

00:13:38.800 any double medic cards. They're going to have an experienced medic with somebody who's less

00:13:43.600 experienced. And I can see the point of that, but what they're also going to do is they're going to

00:13:46.880 break up some really good partnerships. There's groups of paramedics out there, you know,

00:13:51.200 partners who've been partners for a long time. They work well together. They do good work.

00:13:55.280 And the fact that the system is so bad right now, we have so many people off on physical and mental

00:14:01.040 health leave. The idea that you're going to break up working partnerships in order to spread out

00:14:07.200 resources even thinner than they already are, that's not the answer. Breaking up these partnerships,

00:14:12.800 single medic trucks is not the answer. They just refuse to deal with the real problems, which is hallway

00:14:18.320 weights, flexing, massive flexing. Ambulances, your ambulance, where you live down there in the

00:14:26.240 Pritis area, they frequently get in their truck at shift change and start driving. And if they're not 1.00

00:14:32.080 doing calls, they're moving to cover from one area to the other. And they'll do that for 12 hours.

00:14:36.640 In Calgary. In Pritis. Yeah. Well, it's, it's, yeah. And we talked about solutions at that community 1.00

00:14:42.640 meeting the other night. Yeah. And, and there was FOIPs done by a paramedic showing the information

00:14:47.360 and Pritis was striking because we have our own little ambulance. We have a, well, a little,

00:14:51.920 it's an ambulance. It's the only stock one that we're in our little community that still has a lot

00:14:55.760 of people there and needs and services. And over 1500 calls in a year of that ambulance to Calgary.

00:15:01.840 Yeah. And not a single one in Pritis last year. There was one the year before. I don't want to go

00:15:06.000 into that. Right. So an ambulance that does 1500 calls in total everywhere, but in its own backyard.

00:15:11.760 Yeah. Pritis, I think is probably the most abused ambulance in Alberta. Maybe I pissed somebody. 1.00

00:15:17.520 I said blame goes around. Right. But there were crews that used to love to work in Pritis. And now

00:15:25.280 the reason Pritis was out of service on Monday night, I heard one of the medics quit, literally said,

00:15:30.800 I can't do this anymore on this truck. It's too much. Yeah. And I got that message from you and

00:15:35.200 I whipped up there and had a look, you know, cause it's a nice big building and it's all lit. And sure

00:15:39.520 enough, you know, I took a picture, but it didn't really explain a lot, but you can see the two fire

00:15:42.480 trucks and here's this, this ambulance sitting there, dark, nobody in the building, uh, no personal

00:15:47.120 vehicles outside. So it's not even serving Calgary at this point. I mean, it's just wasted. And as you said,

00:15:53.040 there's part of the other problem with these partnerships, they can't form, they can't develop

00:15:56.320 if we have such a high turnover in an area like Pritis, that's rural. You need to know your way

00:16:00.800 around. It's a different skill set in a rural area as well. You need to get somebody from downtown

00:16:05.360 Calgary, driving around in the dark in the middle of the night when they signed up to work in Calgary.

00:16:10.000 Yeah. There's different local challenges. Interesting comment at that meeting. You

00:16:13.680 remember the one person who attended suggested Casey, I think I said, what's the business case for

00:16:19.120 having an ambulance for this few number of calls? I said, that's a really good point. Because right now,

00:16:24.400 AHS doesn't offer an option other than an ambulance with two paramedics that are owned literally by the

00:16:30.640 central government that they'll, they have to go wherever they're told. But just imagine for if

00:16:35.280 you had an ambulance with one paramedic in it, that was an AHS paramedic and you had a corps of

00:16:40.400 volunteers who worked at normal jobs in, lived in Pritis and each signed up to do shifts to drive the 0.81

00:16:48.560 ambulance and be a partner and they could get some medical training. They'd have a class for a license so

00:16:53.040 they could drive the ambulance and they'd be excited to go. That would immediately cut your

00:16:56.160 wages in half. Not only that, but it would also keep your ambulance in your community because

00:17:00.480 there's no way those volunteers would put up with being sent to Calgary for 12 hours. It's a brilliant

00:17:07.040 idea. It would keep your truck there. And that's how I started. Don't forget that I walked into the

00:17:11.360 ambulance station in High River 40 years ago and said, Hey, I hear you need some help. And they said,

00:17:16.160 yeah, if you had a class four, you could start tonight. And I said, well,

00:17:19.360 and there's people who will do it. Like the volunteer force for the firefighters is huge in

00:17:23.200 Pritis. There's a whole bunch of, they enjoy it and they're trained and they, and they, it's a social 0.99

00:17:27.120 thing and they like contributing to the community and getting out and dedicating some time. Likewise,

00:17:31.760 with a paramedic, if that opportunity is there, I got to admit, you know what? I've got a class four,

00:17:35.680 I could update some first aid credentials. I'm home a lot in evenings. I could say, yeah,

00:17:39.280 this many hours a week. You know what? If you get a call, I could drive that while you.

00:17:43.040 And when you mentioned fire, there's a striking difference in the teamwork and the camaraderie

00:17:47.680 and the leadership and the sense of belonging that fire services have that EMS no longer has.

00:17:54.000 Every paramedic I talked to feels disconnected. They're, they never see their supervisor. They're

00:17:59.280 run off their feet. They feel like they don't get any support. And let's face it, our leadership,

00:18:05.120 we saw a graphic example of that in that documentary. It's abysmal.

00:18:08.480 Yeah. Well, and it doesn't matter what trade you're in. If you're demoralized,

00:18:12.080 you're not going to do a good job. Exactly.

00:18:13.600 If you, you know, and, and the, the burnout, the PTSD, the, the frustration,

00:18:18.400 we're suffering from this. And, uh, you know, it's just drives me nuts. I've been writing about

00:18:23.120 this for years. And, you know, we see this, the great thing with instant traffic,

00:18:26.320 I can see which columns hit it out of the park and which don't. And, and EMS wants to do okay.

00:18:31.600 You know, but people pay attention. This should be grabbing your eye. You know, your, your elderly

00:18:37.360 aunt could die because of this. You might, when you fall down putting up Christmas lights like this,

00:18:41.600 these are warning signals, folks. I mean, it's going to get worse.

00:18:44.640 And it really is a metaphor for a lot of other things that are wrong in our society.

00:18:48.160 This is people taking care of each other. This is an ambulance service that literally 15 years ago

00:18:54.240 was a premier ambulance service. We were in the top 5% in North America. We held great conferences,

00:18:59.760 our advanced life support teams would compete in other, uh, countries and they would do very well.

00:19:06.480 We, uh, we were the top trained, top motivated, top managed, uh, ambulance service, I think,

00:19:12.400 in the whole country. And now 15 years later, look where we are. We have a giant central control

00:19:17.200 that manages everything. Uh, long response times, patients unable to get to care. It's, it's really

00:19:24.400 frustrating, but it can be fixed. Yeah. Well, and speaking of also workarounds and things,

00:19:28.080 it's funny with the timing and Maryland, one of our commenters there, Wilton says,

00:19:30.880 high level had a volunteer ambulance service for many years. And just recently high level has

00:19:35.280 come up with something. That's a workaround. It sucks that they have to do a workaround,

00:19:39.120 but at least it's a working one. And it's brilliant. Yeah. So explain that.

00:19:43.440 I mean, we've heard of a lot of Airdrie, Vulcan, uh, even Calgary, fire trucks, fire crews show up and

00:19:50.080 say, jeepers, this guy's really sick. We got to go to the hospital. They'll phone a doctor. They'll say,

00:19:54.320 we can't wait. This doctor online will say, go take them to the hospital and fire truck.

00:19:58.880 What high level did is they bought a vehicle, a mobile rescue unit. Let's call it that an MRU.

00:20:06.400 Can't call it an ambulance because in Alberta, it's illegal to call it an ambulance unless it's

00:20:10.960 licensed by the, but they put fire rescue on the side of this ambulance looking vehicle. And now they

00:20:16.400 drive that to medical calls. They use it as a base to, you know, somebody who's lying in a ditch,

00:20:20.880 they'll pick them up and they'll put them in this fire rescue unit on the cot, on the stretcher

00:20:26.000 to keep them warm. And then let's face it. If the ambulance isn't coming, they'll phone the doctor

00:20:30.000 and say, look, this guy's sick. We got to go. And they will take him to the hospital. I think a lot

00:20:34.960 of ambulance or a lot of fire services are going to mimic that. They're going to start driving these

00:20:40.080 fire rescue mobile response units to these medical calls. Well, that's a great looking truck that one,

00:20:46.960 too. I mean, it's a tough thing. High level has special challenges. I mean, they could be running

00:20:50.960 out to Zama or Assumption or Fort Vermilion. And I've worked a lot up there. And I mean, there's some

00:20:56.160 people working in high risk environments, some strong weather conditions and isolated areas. So

00:21:02.400 you need some, some pretty well-trained people to get out there. A lot of those industrial sites

00:21:06.080 that take care of their people, they actually have better service in some of the small towns in

00:21:09.440 Southern Alberta. And again, we've talked, you've seen in the news, Vulcan. It's not Claire's home.

00:21:16.960 It's Coldale. Coldale has made it public that they want their ambulance service back. They want control

00:21:23.680 of their ambulance service in their community. Just to remind everybody, we had all that. It

00:21:28.400 wasn't, what, 2009 was it when the Stelbach government said, okay, that's it. We're going to

00:21:32.640 centralize this under AHS. Before that, all the communities had their own and maintained their own.

00:21:36.960 I mean, this, it was a solution looking for a problem and they created it. And to be fair,

00:21:41.040 a lot of those small communities wanted AHS to take over, figuring they'd get better funding and

00:21:46.400 get better trained staff. A lot of those smaller communities had mom and pop ambulance services.

00:21:51.440 There were some really Cadillac services like Highwood, High River and District Ambulance. They

00:21:56.640 did terrific work. There were some fire-based services in Lethbridge and Red Deer and Fort McLeod that

00:22:02.160 also did terrific work. So again, some of them saw an opportunity. Don't forget that

00:22:08.240 as soon as Calgary gave up the ambulance service to the province, they stuck several million dollars

00:22:14.080 in operating expenses back into their jeans that they didn't have to spend to prop that ambulance

00:22:19.200 service up every year. Not only that, but then they started charging AHS for the space they were

00:22:25.440 taken up in the local fire stations. Oh yeah. It's a, it's all about money. It's all about power.

00:22:30.720 It's all about control. It always comes to that in the end. So before I let you go,

00:22:34.080 I see you got your card here for your, uh, activism with the end hallway waiting. I don't know if you,

00:22:39.120 you know, I have to, I have to laugh. Uh, and you can show this if you want.

00:22:42.720 Yeah. If you want to hold that up, I could, let's see here folks. Can you see it? It's a postcard

00:22:47.840 size. I guess it's a little small for the camera and hallway meeting.

00:22:51.200 So when I traveled and spoke back in 2016, 2017, I used to hand out this card and it says,

00:22:57.280 end hospital hallway waiting. Paramedics don't belong in hospital hallways. Tell your medical

00:23:01.680 director, tell your professional association and your elected officials, you're a field paramedic,

00:23:06.960 not a hallway nanny. Now I am not saying that patients should just be dropped off

00:23:12.400 at the hospital and we leave. We need a better way of managing those patients in the hospital. And we can

00:23:19.680 talk a lot about access block and some of the problems in the hospital. I tried to help for

00:23:23.600 years. I was a good, good team player, but it became very clear at the end that the hospital's

00:23:29.360 not interested in fixing this problem themselves. They're willing to keep using paramedics to bandaid

00:23:34.480 the solution, which hurts my patients waiting for care in the field. So as far as I'm concerned,

00:23:40.080 hallway waits have to end or at least be managed so that 80 or 90% of the time we should be walking in,

00:23:46.800 leaving our patients there and getting back to work where we belong in the community. That's my thought.

00:23:52.560 Yeah. Okay. Well, before you take off here, so you're doing more stuff, you've got a meeting,

00:23:57.520 I think you said you did one in Cochrane the other night, you got one perhaps coming in

00:24:00.000 Okotoks and where can people find more information on what you've been up to then?

00:24:03.440 Yeah. So if you all over Facebook, at these small town meetings that we've had, they look for a local

00:24:10.320 name like Stetler, EMS Crisis Citizen Action Group, Strathmore Citizen Action Group, Cochrane,

00:24:16.960 Claresholm, Nanton, High River. We've done town hall meetings, we've invited lots of people to come and

00:24:23.360 speak. Lots of citizens have stepped up and they're investigating what they need to do to keep their

00:24:29.600 ambulance in their community. Cochrane collected 3,500 signatures, local townspeople delivered them to

00:24:36.080 the MLA. And I am confident that a lot of what the CMS Advisory Committee is doing right now

00:24:42.480 was spurred by just citizens getting together and saying, we're not going to put up with this

00:24:47.360 anymore. We want our ambulance back. Danielle Smith has come to some of our town hall meetings.

00:24:52.720 She's been prepping for two years for this and I'm very confident that she's going to make some

00:24:56.320 positive changes. Well, I sure hope so. So great. Well, I appreciate you coming in. It's always good to

00:25:01.520 talk to you, Dawn. We could babble forever. We've done that before. So it's great though to see some

00:25:07.120 action. We're seeing it in a time of transition and some changes into Smithson. She's got her other

00:25:10.720 challenges, but she wants to take this on. So hopefully... And we're all willing to help.

00:25:14.160 You know, paramedics, if you just let them go and put them to work, they'll light up.

00:25:18.800 We're very independent people. That's what we want to do. If you wanted easy money,

00:25:22.160 you'd have gone into the oil field. Well, I wouldn't say easy. That's a separate issue.

00:25:25.840 I don't want to knock the oil, but either way, it's certainly a calling, not a...

00:25:28.560 Really good seeing you, Corey. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Dawn. And

00:25:30.800 anybody else, if you're looking for info, yes, look up Dawn Sharp or look at those

00:25:34.000 Facebook groups or even email me and I'll see if I can hook you up. And hey,

00:25:36.640 if you don't have a group in your area yet, start one up. Let me know. I'll be right out.

00:25:41.360 Thanks, Dawn. Okay. Thank you.

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Western Standard - October 21, 2022

Retired paramedic Don Sharpe on Alberta's EMS crisis

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