A paramedic was running on fumes after working 14 hours. He was asked to do one last job… and then a terrifying thing happened
An overworked emergency worker narrowly escaped death after falling asleep at the wheel and crashing an ambulance following an 18-hour nightmare.
The Victorian paramedic had started work at 7am on Wednesday and had already completed 14 hours of duty when he was asked to drive to NSW for one last job.
He had finished driving home around 1.30am on Thursday when his vehicle hit an embankment at 90km/h and ended up on its side in north-east Victoria.
Ambulance crews managed to free him from the wreckage and then flew him to the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Danny Hill, secretary of the Victorian Ambulance Union, said it was not an isolated case of ambulance crews working 18-hour days. He said the heavy workload was putting lives at risk.
“This is an everyday occurrence, it doesn’t shock us at all,” Hill told Channel Nine. Today on Tuesday.
“This happens every day that aid workers work… four or five hours of forced incidental overtime and it’s hard for them to refuse it.”
“All too often they are used in emergency departments or for cases with a very low urgency. They are also often used as a tool, often to stop the clock for government KPIs. That becomes dangerous,” he said.
The paramedic had been working from 7am to 1.30am the next morning when his ambulance hit an embankment at 90km/h and overturned.
Danny Hill (pictured centre) from the Victorian Ambulance Union said it was not just a case of paramedics working 18-hour days.
Mr Hill said the emergency worker had not stopped during the entire 18-and-a-half hour shift.
Around 9 p.m., the emergency worker was concerned about the number of hours he had worked when they were given one last job in another state.
“They had been at Wangaratta Hospital for a couple of hours. At about 9:30 p.m. they said, ‘Look, we’ve been at it for about 14 hours now,'” Hill said.
‘And then Ambulance Victoria said, “Look, we’ve got a job over the border in NSW in Corowa and we’ve got no one else to go to.” So off the crew went.’
Mr Hill said crews from Victoria regularly come to New South Wales looking for work because there are no facilities close to the border.
The paramedic returned to his base in Myrtleford at 12.30am, dropped off a colleague and went home.
“He then veered out of his lane, turned left at 55 mph and rolled down the embankment,” Hill said.
He added that the aid worker has recovered physically, but is under stress.
Mr Hill said he was surprised that such cases did not occur more often given the high workload.
The Victorian Ambulance Union blamed the crash on the heavy workload its members were having to endure
“The employer must put in place controls and ensure that emergency workers are given adequate breaks, that they finish their shift at a reasonable time and that they have a manageable workload,” he said.
“We just don’t see enough improvement in that area of the system.”
An Ambulance Victoria spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they are investigating the incident.
“Our initial investigations suggest that the paramedic and an Ambulance Community Officer were on call when they were dispatched to a business in Corowa at 9.30pm on Wednesday 26 June, and were taken off the business at 11.16pm. They were not scheduled to work an 18-hour shift,” he said.
‘AV is assessing the circumstances, including the movement of the ambulance between its arrival at Myrtleford at 00:39 on Thursday 27 June and its turnaround at 01:26.
‘However, there is no evidence that the paramedic was sent to a case at that time.’