Advertisement
Opinion

For those in the ambulance service, strike days are no different from business as usual

As 10,000 ambulance workers take part in a national strike, one paramedic writes to health secretary Steve Barclay laying bare the scale of the NHS crisis and pleading with the government to fix it

Dear Steve Barclay, I’m a paramedic at an NHS ambulance service in England. Today is strike day, and I’m begging you to put aside your party’s dispute with trade unions and fix our NHS. The strikes aren’t going to break it, it’s already broken. 

A few days ago, I went to a man in his 30s with a treatable illness who had been waiting 12 hours for an ambulance. His heart had stopped beating by the time I arrived. 

I truly believe that if he had been seen in 18 minutes – the target for category 2 emergency calls like his – he would have lived. He should have been taken to hospital, spent a few days in a bed cared for by world-leading nurses, and discharged in time for Christmas.

I’ve never seen anything like the crisis we’re facing now. It’s unsafe and the level of suffering is more than I saw even during the pandemic. I very rarely cry at work. To work in the ambulance service you have to develop an outer shell that keeps your mind on the job, whether that’s a rape scene, murder or violence against children. But that day I sat in my cab crying my eyes out thinking of that dead man’s poor family. Because this was completely avoidable. 

Your support changes lives. Find out how you can help us help more people by signing up for a subscription

In one trust there were 420 patients waiting for an ambulance in a single evening earlier this month and more than 150 ambulances were waiting outside a hospital to hand over a patient. The South Western Ambulance Service has already issued a warning to the public that ambulances may only be able to respond to calls when “there is the most immediate risk to life”. The East of England Ambulance Service has already declared a critical incident. This is before the strikes have taken place.

Advertisement
Advertisement

This is our new business as usual. This story is not a one-off antidote but an hourly occurrence up and down the country. These people should not be dying and their families should not be going through this. You, as health secretary, have warned that ambulances may not get to all emergency calls during the strike. They’re not getting to all of them anyway. 

During that worst shift of my life, we might as well have had all our staff on strike. And the crazy thing is, if all our staff are on a picket line, they are legally required to leave to respond to the most serious category of emergencies. In that scenario they might be able to get to patients quicker than during my shift when there were hundreds of ambulance crew members stuck in queues outside hospitals. 

I pay my union subs, but I’m no trade unionist. If that man had died during a strike day because my colleagues were standing on a picket line rather than going to save his life, I couldn’t support that. But he died on a “normal day”. This is our new normal.

Personally, I’m not too concerned about my pay as I don’t have any dependents. But to do this job, what I need more than anything is more colleagues. 

And if the only way we can persuade my colleagues to stop quitting, or to persuade new recruits to do this job that exposes you to traumatic events daily, is terrible for your mental health, and takes up your nights and weekends, is to raise their pay, then we’re going to have to give them the pay they want.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

Advertisement

Support someone in your own community

With our online vendor map, you can support a local vendor by supplementing their income with a subscription to Big Issue. For every annual subscription sold via a vendor, a vendor receives £50.

Recommended for you

Read All
Elon Musk's Twitter, where 'free' speech will cost you £11 a month
Marc Burrows

Elon Musk's Twitter, where 'free' speech will cost you £11 a month

Twenty years on from Iraq, a reader asks: what did Blair truly believe?
Letters

Twenty years on from Iraq, a reader asks: what did Blair truly believe?

What I learned from living for a year only on foraged foods
Foraging

What I learned from living for a year only on foraged foods

Water companies fouled our rivers, now they want us to pay to fix it
Paul McNamee

Water companies fouled our rivers, now they want us to pay to fix it

Most Popular

Read All
Here's when people will get the next cost of living payment in 2023
1.

Here's when people will get the next cost of living payment in 2023

No internet, no opportunities: Addressing the challenges of digital exclusion in the UK
2.

No internet, no opportunities: Addressing the challenges of digital exclusion in the UK

What are 15-minute cities? The truth about the plans popping up from Oxford all the way to Melbourne
3.

What are 15-minute cities? The truth about the plans popping up from Oxford all the way to Melbourne

They Might Be Giants is not a cult: How they built a birdhouse in your soul... and a 40-year sustainable creative enterprise
4.

They Might Be Giants is not a cult: How they built a birdhouse in your soul... and a 40-year sustainable creative enterprise