Family’s ambulance plea

By Melissa Donchi
PETER and Cheryl Hindhaugh believe their son’s death could have been prevented if there had been more emergency ambulance services in the region.
Mr and Mrs Hindhaugh from Yarra Glen were left to wait nearly half an hour for an ambulance while their 11-year-old son Jake suffered a deadly asthma attack that eventually took his life.
Their wait was due to the fact the ambulance was coming from Diamond Creek because the much more convenient Healesville and Lilydale ambulances were unavailable.
Peter Hindhaugh says this was unacceptable.
“We cannot be expected to wait for an ambulance for more than 20 minutes in a dire emergency,” Mr Hindhaugh said.
“These are life or death situations that simply can’t wait that long.
“While people who work in emergency services do a brilliant job, the Government needs to be doing a lot more to ensure these people can work to the best of their ability.”
The Mail was recently contacted by a source within the Metropolitan Ambulance Service who said a lack of resources and a dispatch system which is designed to meet response times rather than medical needs were driving ambulance paramedics into chaos.
“We are solely being driven by response times which means a lot of experienced paramedics are responding to calls to ‘stop the clock’ (meet response times),” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous because of fears for his job.
“This means the most experienced ambulance crews including ICU are attending jobs that don’t require their expertise.
“There is only one designated intensive care ambulance in Ringwood which covers the areas of Monbulk, Warburton, Healesville, Yarra Glen and over towards Warrandyte and Mitcham.
“It is easily one of the busiest ambulance stations in Melbourne partly because anyone can get an ambulance for anything,” the source said.
“There is an extremely low morale among paramedics at the moment because of this ongoing situation.”
Industrial officer at Ambulance Employees Australia Brenda Forbath says the organisation was aware of the low morale among MICA officers.
“We had been hearing these concerns for some time and decided to do a survey to see just how serious they were,” Ms Forbath said.
“A satisfaction survey was mailed out to MICA officers in November last year and we have just drawn up the final report a few weeks ago.”
The results will be sent out to employees and Health Minister Bronwyn Pike next week in a report called Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance: A Service in Crisis.
The survey received a strong interest from employees with 121 responses from a possible 234 MICA officers.
“We’ve had a good return rate and the responses have been revealing,” Ms Forbath said.
“We are about to send it out and we look forward to hearing from the Health Minister.”
While Ms Pike was unavailable to comment, Seymour MP Ben Hardman said he sympathised with the Hindhaugh family and said he was always pushing for more resources in his electorate.
“As a parent I can imagine how traumatic it would be for the family, especially in those circumstances,” Mr Hardman said.
“I think we all want the best possible services and systems in place to prevent situations like this from happening.”
But Mr Hindhaugh was unappeased by these comments saying words were no longer enough.
“We’ve lost our son and while sympathy is nice it’s not going to bring him back,” Mr Hindhaugh said.
“Politicians won’t act until it’s their children.”