Firefighters on one of British Columbia’s Gulf Islands are sounding the alarm about emergency health care, after they’ve been left driving ambulances on multiple occasions due to paramedic shortages.
Gabriola Fire Chief Will Sprogis told Global News that members of his department were forced to take the wheel on two occasions this weekend alone.
In a case on Saturday, there was only one paramedic available, while in a second case on Sunday the community’s only ambulance was off the island.
“Our primary focus is fire protection, fire safety and fire suppression — medical is kind of a secondary operation we perform and we’re happy to perform it … but we are going beyond our job description now driving the ambulance,” Sprogis said.
“That’s my ongoing concern, is that a patient is going to die but we’re on a fire which is our primary task.”
Sprogis said the situation has gotten bad enough that several members of the island’s volunteer fire department have invested their own time and money into getting a Class 4 driver’s licence, which is required to drive an ambulance.
Fire captain and training officer Kitt Stringer said he’d been on shift for at least two other similar incidents in recent months.
“We had to take fire department personnel and actually put them on the ferry and drive them across to Nanaimo because not only were there not enough paramedics available on Gabriola to show up with a full crew, but they did not have enough paramedics available in Nanaimo to send over on the ferry and transfer,” he said.
“We rolled the dice and luckily we didn’t have a fire at the time and it worked out.”
The ambulance station serving the community of about 4,200 residents is currently staffed from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sprogis said.
BC Emergency Health Services, which operates the ambulance service, confirmed that firefighters have been called on to drive an ambulance 17 times this year.
Both fire officials were quick to say they weren’t criticizing paramedics, who they said were doing their best with the staffing available.
But they said they hope management and provincial officials are taking notice.
“We’re not a complaining bunch, but come on,” Stringer said.
Troy Clifford, union president of the Ambulance Paramedics of B.C., said the situation on Gabriola was emblematic of issues in many isolated parts of B.C.
“A lot of rural and remote communities, they’re relying on police, fire, anybody who hopefully can be a professional to assist, and that’s really unacceptable,” he said.
“And it’s not optimum for patient care, that’s the key thing.”
Clifford said precarious pay in small communities remains a major barrier to paramedic recruitment and retention.
The province’s new “scheduled on-call” model, which provides paramedics with a guaranteed eight hours of pay followed by a 16-hour on call period on three-day rotations has “not been effective,” he said.
The island, along with communities such as Nakusp, Valemont, McBride and Bowen Island, could quickly address their staffing issues with a permanent, 24-hour ambulance station, he argued.
“We have about 50 per cent in the province full time and part time on call — no other professions do that,” he said.
“Why is it not acceptable for the citizens of Gabriola to have a full time ambulance?”
In a statement, BC Emergency Health Services, which operates the ambulance service, said it was taking steps to improve staffing on the island.
“BCEHS has been rolling out important changes to paramedic staffing model across the province, including on Gabriola Island,” it said.
“We are working to address a historical reliance on on-call staffing by introducing hundreds of full time and part time permanent positions, including four new, permanent paramedic positions on Gabriola Island, bringing the total permanent positions at the Gabriola station to six.”
The service added a second ambulance to the island last November, it added.