'Take us seriously': fatigued paramedics slam 'unsustainable' workload

The protest was sparked by an incident in Hume where a fatigued Myrtleford paramedic allegedly rolled his ambulance about 1.30am on June 27 - 18 hours after his shift began.

"That could have been any one of us," Bendigo paramedic and Victorian Ambulance Union representative Rick Morton said.

"It's really triggered a lot of us to obviously come to action."

Di Bosse said more protection was needed for on-call paramedics like herself.

"We work a day shift for 10 to 12 hours and then we have an on-call component overnight, in my case for eight days straight," she said.

"So we start Thursday morning one week and finish Thursday night the next week.

"There's no meal breaks, there's no warnings, which means there's no incentive for Ambulance Victoria to give us breaks or stop sending us to jobs overnight ... the workload is getting unsustainable."

Ambulance Victoria said it was reviewing the circumstances of the movement of the ambulance.

"However, there is no indication the paramedic was dispatched to a case at that time," a spokesperson told The Border Mail.

One of the biggest issues paramedics were raising was non-emergency or low acuity cases being classified as emergencies, leading to ambulances attending incidents they might not have needed to.

That leads to ramping at hospitals and puts other lives in danger, Ms Bosse said.

"If someone's in cardiac arrest, 10 minutes is the difference between them surviving and not surviving," she said.

"If we're unable to respond because we're ramped or are responding to low acuity cases, it's heartbreaking."

The Bendigo Advertiser understands the closest appropriate ambulance would always be sent to emergency cases regardless of where it was based.

Ambulance Victoria's operating model involved teams with different skill sets including first responders, intensive care paramedics, airwing, retrieval services and transport or advice matched to the needs of patients.

Despite Victoria having the largest paramedic workforce of any Australian service, Bendigo mobile intensive care ambulance (MICA) paramedic Matt Nadin said that on the morning of Wednesday, July 3, staff could not meet the demand for ambulances.

"This morning already there's been multiple texts for people to come in on their days off," he said.

"The demand for ambulances is so high that they've asked for additional staff to come in on their days off, which is only further contributing to fatigue."

Paramedics remain in negotiations with Ambulance Victoria after failing to come to terms on a new enterprise agreement.

State-wide industrial action began in March, which included paramedics scribbling slogans into ambulances.

Paramedics also threatened to not collect billing details from patients.

In March, Premier Jacinta Allan said "we need to obviously see these negotiations come to a conclusion".

On July 3, a Victorian Government spokesperson said it was expected Ambulance Victoria and the Victorian Ambulance Union "continue to negotiate in good faith and reach a resolution as soon as possible".

Mr Nadin said members of the union were now begging the government and Ambulance Victoria to "take us seriously".

"We're here to help the Victorian community, we need the community's help now," he said.

"We've been begging months for people to listen, the government to listen, our employer to listen.

"People aren't listening; so we really need the Victorian communities' help to get behind us.

"At some stage, someone's going to die. People already have died waiting for ambulances and more people are going to die if the government and AV don't start taking this seriously."

Ambulance Victoria was contacted for comment.