What’s been described as the largest hiring push in B.C.’s history in rural and remote areas will see several Okanagan ambulance stations move to 24/7 full-time staffing.
Troy Clifford, president of the Ambulance Paramedics of BC, CUPE Local 873, which represents 4,500 paramedics and dispatchers, said part-time stations will move to full-time, around-the-clock staffing in cities such as West Kelowna, Lake Country, Peachland, Vernon, Summerland, Osoyoos, Oliver, Princeton, Keremeos, Grand Forks, Armstrong, Enderby, Sicamous and Salmon Arm.
“That’s a number of significant increases to full-time resources,” Clifford said.
“It addresses some of our shortages in our capacity to respond. We know that there have been delays, so these are growing areas, the Okanagan is a fast-growing demographic and now it’s going to allow us better patient care.”
Clifford said the staffing improvements should result in quicker emergency response times.
“It exposed how far behind we got that even that is not enough right now to address some of the challenges that we are seeing, so we have more to do.”
Clifford added that the controversial $2-per-hour on-call model in very small B.C. communities is still a compensation issue that needs to be changed.
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“The secondary ambulances and the part-time employees that supplement the system for full-time still are working that precarious work. It is a model used in the smaller communities like Lumby and Midway,” he said.
“All these changes are really good, they are an improvement from part-time to full-time, but we are not getting enough paramedics coming into the profession because of that precarious pay scheme. It is not sustainable and it is hurting our ability to recruit.”
The B.C. government announced on July 14 that it is overhauling the ambulance service to reduce wait times for the most serious 911 calls after complaints about long delays during medical emergencies.
Twenty-two rural ambulance stations across B.C. would be converted to the full-time model, while 85 new full-time paramedics would be hired, in addition to 30 full-time dispatchers and 22 new ambulances.
“When we call for help, we need to know help is on the way, and that it will arrive quickly,” said Adrian Dix, minister of health.
Stronger leadership at BC Emergency Health Services announced in July included the appointment of former Vancouver police chief Jim Chu as chair of a board focused on the ambulance service and Leanne Heppell as the new chief ambulance officer.
Heppell is a clinical nurse specialist with 20 years of experience in senior leadership at Vancouver Coastal Health and the BC Ambulance Service.
Dix said the move to more permanent full-time and part-time jobs to replace casual positions will set a new standard.
“The idea is to create, in smaller communities, jobs where people do other work in health care and serve as ambulance paramedics,” he said.
“That’s the direction that we’ve been going now for three years and we’ve seen some transformation, and we’re going to have to see more.”
Calls for ambulance service spiked during the heatwave starting in late June, and B.C. chief coroner Lisa Lapointe has said 486 sudden or unexplained deaths were recorded, a 195 per cent jump in the average normally seen during a five-day period.
Dix said the province has increased the budget for BC Emergency Health Services from over $424 million to $559 million since 2017, hired more paramedics and negotiated the first collective agreement in years with the union representing emergency health service workers.
Clifford said problems with the system were inevitable and should not have surprised the government during unprecedented high temperatures that further exposed vulnerabilities.
It resulted in mounting complaints from the public calling 911 due to heat-related health problems, especially among elderly people without air conditioning.
“There was incredible pressure on paramedics, and dispatchers were looking at the screen not being able to tell people when they could get an ambulance, knowing that there were hundreds of calls waiting that they needed to dispatch,” Clifford said, adding that the long queues of people on hold took a mental health toll on employees.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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