More nursing help gets paramedics back on the road

Sudbury's paramedics are expanding efforts to get workers back on the road more quickly by increasing nursing services to receive patients coming in to the hospital by ambulance.

A year ago, Sudburys Emergency Medical Service used provincial funding to staff a nurse five-days-a-week in the emergency department. Now they're making it a seven-day-a-week position.

As a nurse in the emergency department, Holly Hern said she has seen paramedics clogging up the hallways.

"If it was a really busy day we could haveeight paramedics in the hallway with their patients," she said. "That's four crews that are not out in the community."

This concerns the deputy chief of operations for the EMS.

"Excessive off-load delays or high volume of patients in the emergency department, your resources are all being tied up in one spot," Aaron Archibald said.

The Ministry of Health has given the EMS an additional $200,000 to allow nursing services to be extended to 12 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week.

Hern said an added person has helped the nursing staff as well.

"We can do a triage note and we can start any directives that we may want to do, such as blood work, give them any medication we can, start an intravenous, that type of thing," she said and noted patients are being treated faster under the new system.