Ambulances in rural Manitoba increasingly sitting idle due to staff shortages

Union leaderssay critical staffing shortages across Manitobaare leaving communities without ambulances to respond in emergencies, and are leaving paramedics feeling burnt out.

Terry Browett, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 803, which representsBrandon firefighters and paramedics, says ambulances from his city are increasingly being called out to surrounding communities without available resources, either because of staff shortages or because they are transferring patients to Winnipeg.

"We have ambulances dedicated to our city, but now we're responding outside of our city to these other communities and then leaving our city unprotected," he said.

On Thursday, the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, which represents rural paramedics in the province, said the number of hours ambulances are sitting idle due to lack of staff has spiked in recent months.

The union received a copy of an October 2021 report from the Brandon-basedMedical Transportation Coordination Centre, which handles dispatch of emergency medical servicesin rural and northern Manitoba.

WATCH | Rural ambulances sitidle due to lack of staff:

Number of rural ambulances sitting idle due to lack of staff

3 years ago

Duration 2:09

Union leaders say critical staffing shortages across Manitoba are leaving communities without ambulances to respond in emergencies, and are leaving paramedics feeling burnt out.

The internal report showed that in September, there were a total of more than 17,000 hours when ambulances could not be staffedthe highest number in the past five years, according to the report.

A spokesperson for Shared Health said those times are spread across the province's entire fleet, and related to long-term vacancies, sick calls, fatigue and other factors.

Bob Moroz, president of the health-care professionals association,says paramedics are working unsustainable levels of overtime, and increasing response times for emergency calls are leadingto worse outcomes for patients.

"Things have happened that are really, really taxing on these medics whocould have made a difference had they been there sooner," he said.

The demands on an understaffed paramedic system are leading to burnout and driving up the number of sick days taken, Moroz said.

"There's only so long you can go working that many hours in a week with no real support in sight from government," he said.

Browett says in the mid-1990s, Brandon paramedics averaged about 2,700 calls per year. That numberhad climbed to nearly7,000 calls in 2021, without an increase in the number of ambulances, the Brandon union president said.

Paramedics waiting for bargaining agreement

Moroz wants the province to publicly acknowledgethat there is a staffing crisis among paramedics and launch a recruitment campaign.

"Staffing of emergency response services has long been a challenge in some rural parts of the province, with efforts underway to recruit staff to provide 24/7 paramedic coverage in order to reduce Manitoba's reliance on overtime or on-call staffing," said the spokesperson for Shared Health,which took over responsibility for emergency response services in 2019.

Rural paramedics have been without a collective bargaining agreement since 2018. Contract negotiations were supposed to begin this fall, but that didn't happen.

The Shared Health spokesperson said collective bargaining with other health sectors will begin once negotiations with nurses are complete.

Collective bargaining with paramedics is now expected to start in early spring.

The provincial government is grateful for the efforts of paramedics and first responders"these past 22 months as COVID has turned all of our lives upside down," the spokesperson said.

Moroz said there's a pay gap between rural paramedics and those in Winnipeg that also needs to be addressed, which he said can be as much as 10 per cent.

Unless more is done to take pressure off of rural paramedics, Moroz said many will simply leave the profession.

"It is a difficult profession to be in in the first place," he said.

"I'm becoming gravely concerned for a lot of our paramedics, mentally speaking."