Image: Wikipedia
Ten days ago, London Ambulance Service was put into 'special measures' by the Care Quality Commission, after a 54-member inspection team found a number of concerns regarding the safety and effectiveness of the service it provides to London’s 8.6 million residents.
It is a finding which would surprise very few frontline ambulance personnel. In recent years, across the nation 999 staff have laboured under increasingly intolerable conditions. Patient emergency calls has risen – as have government demands for efficiency savings. The result? Ambulance resources stretched ever thinner and staff pushed ever harder. Ambulance trusts have resorted to increasingly desperate measures in order to be perceived as effective. Staff have been pushed to the limit with little to no rest time throughout their contracted hours and beyond. Hospital Ambulance Liaison Officers [HALOs] have been employed to hound crews out of A&E departments. Single responder paramedic cars are sent to 'stop the clock' and meet targets more appropriately dealt with by increasingly scarce double-staffed ambulances.
