ACT Ambulance Service (ACTAS) members 'struggling on the frontline'

Kieran Hitchenson was among multiple union delegates from ACTAS who mentioned issues with workload, communication and police support.

Transcript

00:00What are some of the challenges ACTAS has been experiencing in recent years?

00:05We've got ongoing challenges with keeping up with workload and percentage

00:10increase in that workload which is ongoing and it goes back through history.

00:15We're also struggling on the front line to to make informed decisions, patient

00:23centred informed decisions around patient specific needs given that we have no

00:30information. We've only got the information provided during the call.

00:34Have there been instances where ambulance needs support from police and they haven't got it?

00:40Yeah, there's ongoing issues with situations where we know we need to attend to a patient

00:49because of many different scenarios but there's issues with violence or history of violence

01:00or potential violence and we find ourselves sitting on scene for hours offline waiting to gain access

01:08to the patients, waiting for support from police. As I said, the front line officers are usually unaware

01:17of therapists but it causes issues not just for us, the police, but also members of the public.

01:25We've been in discussions service to service for some time now trying to resolve these issues

01:32especially our response to mental health and occupational violence within our workforce

01:39but we haven't seen to get anywhere with it.