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If you had to guess, who would you think holds
the number one spot as Canada's most respected profession? Make your pick,
because I'm about to tell you why this admired career is in serious trouble.
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In their first year on the poll. Paramedics have taken the lead as the most respected profession
in Canada and guess their industry is a wreck.
That's why these men and women often look like they are just
one patient lift away from flatlining themselves.
Paramedics are well known as those frontline health care responders that work tirelessly
to respond to your medical emergencies. They will rush to your door with just a
few limited supplies and maybe even a smile before working to stabilise some of the most
life threatening conditions and injuries you can experience.
Ok then, who took these peoples souls and why should you care about Paramedics? Well,
have you ever used the phrase “hold my beer”? That's why you need paramedics.
Today there are nearly 40,000 identified Paramedics throughout Canada and they have
worked hard to establish themselves as one of the first responders to arrive at your door
in an emergency. They might help you breathe,
stop that bleed or confirm that yes, your leg shouldn’t bend in that direction.
So, Paramedics have always been a pretty quiet profession, with very little fanfare received
or expected. There are only a few well known mentions or appearances inside of pop culture.
When the pandemic hit, it brought paramedics and our closely related healthcare partners
to centre stage. These were some truly - gawd awful miserable years
but hey at least you didn’t have to do your job wearing a sealed garbage bag.
Ok but, hold on, even before the pandemic reached Canada,
Emergency Medical Responders were begging for change. Here’s why:
First: They are incredibly overworked, with widely acknowledged rates of
staff burnout that often reach higher than 60% across Canadian services.
Out of some 1,440 Paramedics surveyed in Ontario,
92% said they are critically understaffed. If we look at British Columbia, the Paramedic
association estimated that they responded to more than one million calls in 2021.
Meanwhile the prairies are not doing any better, a Manitoba report has shown that limited staffing
led to ambulances remaining idle for a cumulative 17,000 hours month after month.
It's when these services fall critically below the
levels of demand that their community asks of them, it becomes a major crisis of care.
Those paramedics that are available and do remain fit enough to work will often become exhausted
during extended shifts that can reach up to 16 hours long. Even with these levels of overtime,
the wait for a responding paramedic can often reach into hour-long delays.
Typically paramedics will issue an area wide Red Alert when there is
no ambulance available to respond to calls. Historically these Red Alerts
were considered rare and they might have even prompted an investigation.
These alerts are now commonplace, growing in both frequency and duration.
Calgary, AB made the news recently when they reported that they had 40 stacked emergency
calls waiting from people who were in distress and calling for an ambulance.
Now if you were to ask a paramedic why this hasn't been addressed yet. Their answer is
likely to focus on low wages, poor benefits and a general disregard for their health.
Paramedics seem to be THE poster child for when the office management from hell
decides that throwing a pizza party will solve all of their staffing problems.
So as you can imagine, it's not uncommon for new Paramedics to
hear about just how little they will collect for completing this emotional
and physically demanding job and yeah it is all that and more.
If we look back in time, we can start to see some of the obstacles that brought us here.
Twenty years ago, a typical call volume of 8-10 calls in a 12 hour shift would have
been considered extremely busy. Now paramedics are regularly conducting
10-14 calls in the same period of time but today the job comes with much more to do.
Beside the insane explosion in call volume,
the complexity of the calls has increased dramatically.
The expectation is that more can and should be done for patients
in the small window of time after the incident and before they reach the hospital.
This higher level of care is often given by advanced paramedics and when a service is lucky
enough to deploy them, they must work to maintain that coverage level, despite any staffing losses.
It’s inside this staffing spiral that you will almost guarantee
the eventual exhaustion of even the most hardened health care provider.
Now add on top the unique stressors that this job creates and you have the
second crisis that paramedics face. Their deteriorating mental health.
For example: 1 in 4 paramedics will develop PTSD at some point in their careers - while their
suicide rates sit at 5x the national average. That’s right up there with your local dentist.
British Columbia gives us a pretty bleak outlook on the mental health of paramedics.
There 30% or nearly ⅓ of ambulance staff are now accessing some form of psychological support and
their mental health claims are representing half of all of their long term disability.
So at this point imagine you are overworked with plenty of mental scars
but when you look for help back at your station you could find they are also part of the problem.
Our strong and stubborn personalities mix with heavy doses of stress
and exhaustion. The result becomes a well known culture of toxicity and poor morale.
***"The numbers of our members off and in treatment because of psychological
injuries is incredible” Troy Clifford, president of the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C
Unfortunately for too many, these are the realities that paramedics face,
to remain in theis industry for an extended period
means that you roll the dice on your physical and mental health over and over.
Look, Being a Paramedic has never been a profession for the faint of heart. Just as
it was decades ago, it is still chosen by that special kind of person that decides to dedicate
their body and time to others. If we're lucky, a few of these people will carry paramedicine
into a lasting career but right now, we aren’t giving them any good reasons to do that.
When these paramedics end their day, when they finish their shift.
They don’t deserve to have their body broken, their mental health neglected
and all for a wage that doesn’t hold a candle to other comparable emergency services.
Paramedics don’t suddenly lose their passion for helping others but we do fall out of love
with - this - job. We will move on to one of the more stable and supported medical fields.
Imagine planning to become an overworked nurse, thinking it will allow you to have
more time off with an improved mental health. Yikes, that's how you know you’re in trouble.
Those ridiculous Paramedics that remain into their twilight years
are resilient and truly some of the best of us. They deserve the recognition and
benefits that come with being the skilled health care professionals that they are.
So wrapping it up, despite for years this medical field begging for the assistance
it needs to solve these well known problems, it is only now after a global pandemic and
crippling nationwide shortfalls that we can finally see any help on the way.
This industry isn’t a mystery. The pay and support for this essential service need to be
brought in line to match the reality of the work and that work has always been a matter of life and
death - but this time, I'm talking about the lives of some of our lesser known health care heroes.
Check out our other videos like these ones here. Frontline is all about those emergency services,
the military and everything in between. Thanks for watching, have a great day.