“111, what is your emergency?”<\/p>\n
The emergency is St John.<\/p>\n
Frontline staff have told The Detail it’s broken and on life-support – underfunded, understaffed, and overstressed.<\/p>\n
And now First Union members have voted to strike again, on 27 September, after rejecting the latest offer from Hato Hone St John.<\/p>\n
Staff say it’s a last resort but they are facing dangerous situations and fear a colleague will be killed on the job.<\/p>\n
“That’s my worst fear,” said emergency medical technician Tom Bannan, who has worked for Hato Hone St John for 35 years. “I’ve seen it happen in Australia… and it’s only a matter of time before it happens here. I have never wanted to say that but now… I think so.”<\/p>\n
He says they desperately need more funding and support.<\/p>\n
While St John can be the difference between life and death for patients, the Government only funds it to about 83 percent. The rest is made up of donations, fundraising and patient co-payments.<\/p>\n
“It’s sad, I see my colleagues, they are really frustrated by the funding, we heard about the promises the coalition government promised us… but nothing. We need 100 percent funding, and we need it now. We may have to strike again.”<\/p>\n
Burnout, he says, is rife.<\/p>\n
“In 2022, there were 300 to 400 peer support recommendations for staff to talk to someone; today, there are more than 1000. That’s huge.<\/p>\n
“Young staff are heading to Australia, where they can earn 23 percent more. In the past six months we have had six people leave our station alone. We need to retain staff. We need more staff.<\/p>\n
“We are broken.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Auckland councillor and Northland farmer Chris Darby came to the rescue of a lost ambulance, which was looking for a stroke patient on a remote beach. It was a code red incident.<\/p>\n
The two-wheel drive ambulance had been given the wrong directions, so Darby guided them over 2km of unmaintained council road to within 600m of the patient.<\/p>\n
He said it could have been avoided if rural first responders had been contacted.<\/p>\n
“It took them about an hour and a quarter to get to where I was,” Darby told The Detail. “The real problem here is we have rural fire services – and within these are very well trained first responders and the protocol is they are notified when it is code red, and orange, and they can respond.<\/p>\n
“But for months now they haven’t been getting calls from St John dispatch, there seems to be a problem.<\/p>\n
“Patients are waiting 90 minutes for care instead of 10 minutes. That’s the difference between life and death.<\/p>\n
“Talking to first responders up in Northland, they are really concerned they will not get a callout, and somebody will die. They are very, very concerned.”<\/p>\n
He says the problem doesn’t lie with frontline staff but with top-tier management.<\/p>\n
“I think there is a culture problem at St John. Maybe a minister needs to say, ‘I am going to call for a review of this service, I am going to look independently, I am going to take an external look at this organisation, see what’s wrong with it’.”<\/p>\n
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“111, what is your emergency?” The emergency is St John. Frontline staff have told The Detail it’s broken and on life-support – underfunded, understaffed, and overstressed. And now First Union members have voted to strike again, on 27 September, after rejecting the latest offer from Hato Hone St John. Staff say it’s a last resort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11419,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11417\/revisions\/11419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}