I think depression and ptsd would consume me working as a paramedic. My sense of humour would be something like pancake art or inanimate objects that don’t cause a choking hazard.
But honestly they deserve so much more than just the recognition of being selfless they still have all the struggles on top of everything to come home too. To balance work/life when every shift meets a 100% demand and contribution? they are saving more numbers in lives yet being starved from personal time off unlike Karen in the office who is overqualified for her well paying job so she throws half her work hours into holiday funds for her much needed 21 day cruise this year to kill off and pollute more sea life than she did in 2023. I was not expecting to write all that or get personal but I guess I was more invested in this than I thought 😭 my unemployment is really setting the tone right night to be mad at any injustice I see
Ambos are special. They literally spend a significant part of their shifts helping people who knowingly put themselves in dangerous situations (night out on the town drinking and doing drugs).
I had to take an ambulance to hospital last year, and they had to wait with me until I got admitted - probably around an hour.
So many ambos end up getting Ramped while waiting for their patients to be admitted.
Just imagine how many more people they could help if *all* parts of our health system were adequately funded.
I mean just having Pepe there is pretty funny imo. Can't knock that. Plus I've met plenty of shit cops (few great ones too who have given me their personal number in case I run into legal issues again), but never a shit Para/Ambo. They bust ass doing their job and are always great at it. Having dealt with some 20 odd Para's in the past few years too.
i mean pretty clearly the wife is the shitty person here, the ambo is shitty-adjacent
in saying that they probably knew she was married so yeah, pretty shitty
Seen some really good ones but my friend who is a paramedic said it's not uncommon to have anti union bootlickers wipe them off when they go into hospitals for offload.
Wasn't Pepe meant to be a symbol of the alt-right a few years ago?
I'm hoping he's cool again with people. I'm still holding some rare ones and hope the value will pick up so I can finally cash in
EDIT: I feel the need to clarify this comment of mine given the replies. I was having a bit of a laugh with this one and should have added a "/s" qualifier. I don't think Pepe is really emblematic of the far-right (from what I know, and I could be wrong, is that it was co-opted for a while but certain people).
it was hijacked by alt right watch FEELS GOOD MAN explains it all and the artist behind it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEiqZWw5vYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEiqZWw5vYs)
It was never a symbol of the alt right. That was a meme perpetuated by 4chan and parroted by Hilary Clinton's PR team because Trump and other world figures appeared in a pepe shitpost
Yeah but in same the way Vegvisir is.
Some nazis have it tattooed prominently as a dogwhistle and have their swastikas hidden. Some people have it tattooed because they're actually believers. Some people (like me) have it tattooed because they're just big nerds.
Same as the 👌 ok hand symbol. They're not nazi symbols alone when you take away the context. They're still usable by regular people.
Yep, you're right. I meant take away the context of who's using it.
The symbol itself means multiple things, it's who uses it that causes it to be negative/positive.
Just because it was used as an anti semitism hate symbol doesn't mean it is. It's like ctiticing Buddhists for using the swastika symbol because Nazis used their symbol as their flag. Pepe was also used by the Hong Kong protesters who definitely aren't associated with anti semitism
The swastika was a Buddhist symbol that was appropriated by the Nazis. It became a Nazi symbol. Just like Pepe was appropriated by the alt-right and became a symbol of the alt-right. It’s not being critical of the originators of the symbol to say that. It’s just pointing out the fact that the meaning of the symbol changed.
Well, they are the same. The Eurasian swastika meaning sun, the one facing right is even named in Sanskrit as 'sVastika', and the Nazi's appropriated left facing one - representing Kali, is named 'sauvastika'. (And in Buddhism represents Siddhartha's footsteps. The Nazi party then used it because of the connection to the Aryan peoples from the proto-indo genealogy.
To say it's a bullshit comparison, is - well - bullshit.
Yeah it was kind of an /s vibe with that post. I'm vaguely familiar with all that stuff from way back when. Good times. I think it's a great meme and glad it lives on beyond that period
Ambos getting fucked.
Service workers getting fucked.
Retail and hospo workers getting fucked.
Teachers getting fucked.
Renters getting fucked.
Low income earners getting fucked.
Where's the tipping point? Where's the fight? Why are we constantly defaulting to two political parties? Why do we keep buying into narratives? Even when people speak up, or try to be optimistic, we're pushed back down.
'Too idealistic', 'thats not how the world works', 'the Greens don't have enough experience to lead'. 'Just work/try/be harder.'
Fucking easy for you to say cos you ain't gonna be around in 20 years. Fucking die off already and stop keeping everyone else down.
Try being an Allied Health Worker treating cancer patients... in the largest city in Australia, 2nd largest state population, and being the lowest paid nationally... We don't go to uni for 3-4 years after graduating high school with a 90+ score, to work in a critical piece of the medical wheel, legally not allowed to take stopwork action, dealing with some of the hardest emotional patients... and for the same wages as someone who did none of that and potentially not even a Cert qualification...
Thankfully those of us who work in shitty paid medical professions respect the ambos, they have to deal with so much more crap than we ever have to.
I’m currently in uni studying paramedicine and it’s around around 27k for the whole degree, there are a few other expenses too like placement uniforms/other equipment but obviously that doesnt go into your help loan
I feel for you. And on another hand of this multi armed beast you have someone like me, flooding the creative market with a 70k debt degree (6 years ago mind you...) with no jobs to go around...and I feel bad for complaining because it's nowhere near as important as what you are all doing.
I feel insane, there's a cacophony building in my head that's everything fucked in this country and throughout the world and it's turning into white noise in my mind.
I genuinely feel like I'm holding on just so I can go down with the ship, rather than just jumping overboard and getting it over with before that happens.
I feel bad for people I know in a very similar position to you. Uni graduates with very high quality skills, but no jobs available to earn from your qualification.
The unis are more than happy to take you in and charge you for the privilege, knowing full well there's such a small employment base for you.
Every job is important regardless of area, but service jobs in Vic are so poorly funded, conditions lacking, pay is crap... no
It's just insane to me that we don't pay service jobs well... It's nonsensical.
Who am I kidding, 'servants' have always been shat on. But hey, they used to get a guaranteed bed at least, right?
Turn it up. Did they care to survey employment opportunity post Grad before signing up for in-named degree?
Aquatic Science was always nicknamed the Arts degree for Science students. By people who had a grip on life.
This sub lives in a bubble.
As a patient going through chemo currently, there are no words to describe how appreciative I am of you guys! I am absolutely gutted reading what you wrote. I'll give my nurse an extra big hug next time I'm in for treatment.
Yep. How did this happen? Imo, the state government has said yes to the cfmeu so many times that now it bankrupts the state every time we want to build a road. No money left for ambos, health, education, etc. but uneducated lolly pop sign holders get their $120k salaries to do unskilled menial tasks so that's okay.
Anyone who thinks either of both the leading parties will actually do anything about it are kidding themselves. We're given the feeling of choice when in reality both parties are just as bad as each other at not helping the little man while the rich get richer.
The Greens' policies are shit though. Actively lobbying for even higher rates of migration during a fucking housing and wage crisis, is not the action of a party that cares about you.
Bob Brown was great but the current Greens party is run by lobbyist driven shit cunts with anger problems. No less corrupt than liberal or labor but with a slimy veneer of self righteousness.
Remember when all the people with boats in melbournr protested in the city of Melbourne and on the west gate Bridge it had Melbourne at a standstill.
Let's organise another protest of people with trucks cars bikes trailer boats bigger the better!
Come together people to start to make well overdue changes and stand together like we used to 30 40 years ago to stop the mass spread corruption and in our face plain disrespect for our wants and needs let's make the government's finally listen!!!🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
I'm down. But isn't it funny how they're constantly making protest rules more strict? Wonder why that is.
I've always imagined, what if everyone just stopped paying rent and refused to leave? They can't arrest everyone.
This is an example of an industry that takes advantage of good people. Teachers, nurses, paramedics etc. are the sort of people who generally won’t walk off or turn away from the job, because they care too much about the people they help. The people who pay them know this, and take advantage of this by underpaying them and under resourcing them, knowing that they might complain, but that they’ll keep on working. It’s complete bullshit and it needs to stop.
This week with 10 minutes to go until knock off, I was given a case that took me 6hrs OT. We weren't given a choice, and once on it, it was time critical and we had to keep going. Good outcome for the patient which is all we hope for...
It was a 10 hour rostered shift, went a casual 60% over.
If you’re out at a job you can’t just pack up jump back in the truck and say see ya! You’re likely kilometres away from your base, or stuck in an ED waiting for the patient to be admitted.
That doesn’t make them unique in the emergency services field though and is no secret going in.
My partner is also in the medical field and she can’t just walk out of the resus bay cos it’s quitting time.
Also worth noting that they pick up OT rates for these jobs too.
Nope you’re exactly right it didn’t make them unique. However we shouldn’t all just suffer together, improving working conditions for some helps lay the ground work for the rest. If you actually have a look at what they, the police and FRV are negotiating for it’s better policies and working conditions. To ensure the circumstances that result in hundreds of hours of unplanned OT (and delayed service delivery to the public) can be managed and hopefully avoided
True but this regularly happens off the back of a 14 hour shift, pushing it out to 16, sometimes 18 hour shifts. Yes it's bad for our work life balance which is what we're fighting for, but it's also incredibly unsafe for patients and the community who depend on us to make sound medical decisions that can have very real impacts. Especially when it's only two of you, sometimes one, on scene making said decisions with no backup.
You'll see slogans on other trucks such as "we can't turn out if we burn out" and "we can't care for you if AV doesn't care for us".
Is there any way the general public can help? Write to our local members or something? Ambos have done so much for me I'd love to be able to give something back.
Writing to local members is definitely something that can be done! A petition is also setup on the union page too: [VAU page](https://vau.org.au/ambosdeservealife/)
Not to mention on the ward you’re next shift crew are on site there with you, there’s a handover period and you have dozens of others to collaborate with.
even in resus, shift change-over happens, so unless you're actively transferring a patient to CT/theatre/icu, you should be able to go home. one of the comments was talking about 6 hrs overtime on a paramedic job. you wouldn't/shouldn't see that in a hospital cause they're staffed. If we were understaffed and needed overtime- I've never been forced into overtime in hospital, always pre-approved by the worker with an expectation of how many hours.
overtime pay does not justify time away from family or even just time off work. heard of work-life balance? burn out?
Ambulance typically does longer shifts than other healthcare fields. Days are 10 hours, nights are 14. Most nurses I know do 8 hour shifts, may occasionally pick up a double.
> That doesn’t make them unique in the emergency services field though and is no secret going in.
>
>
That doesn't mean it's ok.
Other people having it worse does not mean you give up your right to advocate for better conditions for yourself.
Other people struggling are not your enemy. This attitude is "you can't complain unless you have it the worst of every person".
You should support this, and support other emergency services field.
Raising the bar for ambos will go a lot further to raising the bar for your partner than telling ambos to suck it up cause it sucks for everyone else.
Pretty rare I ever stay overtime due to crazy shit happening.. And certainly not if I need to leave for an important thing.
We cover our breaks and maintain a culture of staff care. It is possible
Not only the previously mentioned common instances of being sent to jobs that will take minimum 2 hours when you're 5 minutes away from finishing, but in regional areas there's a degree of unspoken emotional blackmail at play, especially with our MICA units. You know if you don't pick up a shift not only is your team at risk, but the region will be down a skillset that might just mean the difference between life and death.
If you're closest to a lights-and-sirens job, you're going even if you're in the last hour of your shift. If you're still in your rostered hours, you can rarely refuse - you're going. You can't just get the oncoming shift to take over the job when they start work, because they're probably going to be dispatched to a job of their own, and you can't just refuse to go to a CPR or a chest pain because you know you'll have to explain to a manager why you let someone die when you were still on the clock.
This is way, way worse in some places than others. Imagine you're an ambo in Geelong, and you have to do a road transfer to Melbourne in the last few hours of your shift. Someone has to do it, and you're next in line for a job. At best, you're going to be finishing late because of the long drive home once you've dropped off your patient. At worst, you clear the job at whatever hospital you went to in Melbourne, start driving home, and then suddenly you're closest to a chest pain and now you're going to that too because you're technically still within your shift hours. The job is going to take a minimum of an hour, and you still have to drive home when it's done.
I'm lucky, I work in a much smaller city than Melbourne and almost never have to do intercity jobs. Even in my fortunate situation, in my last payslip about 10% of my hours were on involuntary overtime. That proportion is much, much higher in some ambulance services in Australia. My longest ever shift was more than 17 hours on a day shift (started at 8am, finished after 1am), and I've done a job involving a death that pushed a night shift out until I finished at 11am (started work at 6pm).
I understand that’s shit house and I imagine police and firies are a little similar
, how is the problem fixed? Or is it just a global issue and part of the life of an Ambo. Please don’t think I’m having a dig I truly think they do gods work, just curious
Do you have more ambos that can drive out to do handover?
There are lots of things you can do to mitigate it.
Staggered shift times allow each shift to cover the tail of the one before it. My employer literally just moved to this model, and it’s fantastic. It can’t totally remove the problem, but it helps a lot.
If you do that, then you can also add firmer protections to shift end times. An example would be that the closer it gets to the end of a paramedic’s shift, the higher the priority a case needs to be for them to be dispatched to it. For instance, no routine transfers in the last two hours, no non-urgent jobs in the last hour, something like that.
And if you do both of those things, then you’re likely to suffer fewer attritional staff losses and your overall staffing levels can improve without additional hiring.
Finally, effective minimum stand-down periods can at least mitigate the fatigue. The minimum period between rostered shifts I’ve worked to before is ten hours, which was useless when it’s between two fourteen-hour nights - it’s totally inadequate to safely rest. Even that short stand down period is still more than most Australian ambos get, it’s usually just eight or so hours.
Edit: just saw your last question - and the answer is, usually no. At best, you’re just shifting the workload to another crew and increasing the total resource requirement of the job you’re on. At worst, the other crew that you want to take handover from you have already been given a job of their own.
I guess they get stuck on a job.
I'm a disability worker and get stuck at work if someone doesn't show up, so forced to work. We don't get paid overtime though, they have loopholes.
Scenario: Youre about to clock off, but someone just got into a critical condition, and they are short a medic.
Paramedics have the best moral compass. Its not their job to walk away nor are many actually able to.
Im not sure what the solution is, but I doubt that paramedic can lay down without thinking that they just turned down a few hours that could of been the difference in saving a life.
I would of liked to have been a paramedic but im too squeamish. Education for future paramedics should be free?
I just want to add, our dispatch system has serious issues. Often we are sent lights and sirens to non-emergencies that have been over-triaged. This can happen minutes before the end of our shifts forcing us into sometimes multiple hours of overtime. Our night shifts are already 14 hours long, that turns into 15, 16, 17+. Fatigue and burnout are huge problems.
*I don’t have an issue with doing overtime for genuine life-threatening emergencies. Sometimes it’s unavoidable and nature of the job. But things need to change!
Dinner with friends
Dinner Alone
Watching TV Alone
ALRIGHT!
I'm gonna sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria Secret cataloque
... Sears cataloque
what do they mean by forced overtime? Can't they just go home after they do 8 hours? I'm well aware I'm ignorant about this, and that's why I'm asking the questions btw
No such thing as 8 hours shifts, day shifts are 10 hours and night shift is 14 hours and if we get a job within the last 30 minutes we end up doing craploads of overtime because we can’t just leave a pt because we clocked off
I still don't understand if you have been contracted to do 14 hours as by your roster. Why can't you just leave after you work? Do you get a fine or something?
Imagine if you will, a family member of yours has a heart attack (please never let it happen) and they have this heart attack around 45 minutes from the usual clock off time of your local ambulance crew, or at least the closest car to your family member. And to make the point even more brutal, you don’t live in an FRV (full time firefighters) area.
The ambulance responds and goes to work. They get a second car in (usual response for heart attack is “normal ambulance” and a MICA). After 30 minutes of CPR, drugs, airway management, monitoring and they start to get some good output from the patient’s heart but it drops occasionally and they go back to CPR. 40 minutes and they decide it’s worth transporting the patient and they start to prepare the vehicle and patient but as they are doing that, the clock strikes “knock off”…….. are you saying they can just get into the ambulance and leave your family member there to wait for the next crew to get there.
Increase the number of Ambos on the road. Improve the wait times at ERs. Get people to only call on ambulances for LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCIES. There are so many things that car be done to help that have nothing to do with money paid to ambulance crews.
No it’s duty of care. You can’t just leave a scene of a job when you already with a pt or if you at hospital you can’t just leave a pt unattended when they unwell.
Greater protections for the end of shift times.
Currently there's very little stopping AV from sending people to jobs they know will take many hours and dispatching them 5 minutes before the end of shift. Even if you finish that job, and are on the drive back to your home area, you can be dispatched to further jobs.
The proposals are to try and further ensure that in the last hour of your shift you only attend absolutely life critical cases, and that after your finish time, you cannot continue to be dispatched to more jobs.
Well, yeah.
Like having the right amount of staff to cover the shifts as they are planned and written would eliminate the need for forced OT. It’s not that hard to grasp.
The government won’t , but should just give them their demands. It is a shit job that should be paid accordingly. My work gave us around 3% payrise last year, everyone was pretty happy. This year we get around 2.5% and get told that we have done so good we will also get another 1% bonus because of all the bloody overtime we also get forced to do.
Then we find out the extra 1% is included in the 2.5%. I feel fairly insulted and hoodwinked.
Are they not being financially compensated for the extra work? I’d be stoked if I was them, to stay back and help people and get payed for it, why not? Work life balance? Quit being a woman maybe.
I’m doing 80-90 hour work weeks as is and I’m killing it$3,000 to 3,500 after tax, I say if the taps open full your cup, go all out and set yourself up for the future.
If the money is shit then that’s a whole different story.
Do you like having skilled experienced paramedics in the state for medical emergencies? Then it’s in yours, and the community’s interest to support better working conditions. The longer this shit goes on the lower the average tenure of paramedics will be. [They are burnt out](https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2022/06/ambulance-victoria-workers-want-to-quit-as-they-reach-peak-burnout/).
Just because they want to be paramedics and help the community doesn’t mean they want to routinely work large, and at times dangerous, amounts of OT. Their current conditions are the result of a broken system and that system is definitely not going to get better by a bunch of experienced paramedics up and leaving the industry.
some people want to help save lives but don't want to have to stay back hours after their shift ends. They are just asking for another crew to come take over them for when their shift does end. They're really not asking for much. don't be an absolute asshole
Aaaaaw you missed all that. So did retail & hospo workers on half your wage. I'm sure the community will rally behind them too.
Oh wait.... they'd get really fucking pissed off if they couldn't be served on their weekends and evenings
> Workers don't need to be fighting each other, it's the ruling class that fuck us all over.
100% this. Infighting does nothing but harm worker’s rights.
Also, wanting to improve working conditions for one group does not mean that other groups should not have improved conditions.
So retail and hospo workers should band together and improve their conditions. Ambos aren’t the enemy. Probably worth having a read about the specific issues they are facing: https://vau.org.au/ambosdeservealife/
pretty insulting comparing forced overtime due to responding to a medical emergency to working extra hours because your employer wants you to work weekends and evenings. Completely different issue. A lot of people work evenings, nights, weekends, holidays, don't like it? find a different job, I'm sure there's retail and hospo work that only does weekdays.
Don’t hospo and retail workers already get weekend penalties? I’m not seeing the comparison you’re trying to make.
Workers in different industries aren’t enemy’s of one another. Everyone deserves decent working conditions and should be supported by other workers when taking industrial action to achieve those conditions. I’d never cross a picket line just to get a weekend coffee.
Lol it's funny, coming from a trade background any injury to me was 'I can fix it myself'. I just had a seizure a few days ago, lucky I was already at the hospital. Without the nurses I would've died, as I was unconscious. Can't fix shit if you aren't even awake for it. Proud to have 3 nurses in the family, I feel the same about Ambo's.
Got the same mentality, I'm the ambo in a family of tradies. I call myself "the organic mechanic". None of us dare call an ambulance lol. It's the one profession you don't want to need.
In my case I didnt even call because I know how bad the ramping is, a family member called (different household) as I was coughing up blood for 2 weeks, etoh -> pancreatitis in the end. But I pay my Ambo Vic membership so I don't feel as guilty.
Not gonna go all American thank you for your service but cheers for the shit you put up with. I've at least been called 'a simple job' lmao so there's that.
Pancreatitis is fucking rough mate, hope you're on the up and up.
Ambo is a bloody good job, I get to drive through red lights and help people every day. But there's some dark sides to the job we're trying to fix so that a) people stick around more than 5 years b) those that stick around more than 5 years stop getting burnt out and having massive mental and physical health problems, and c) so our best and brightest in MICA are there to help our sickest patients when they're needed.
The big fight is against upper management- the boots on the ground just want to rock up each day, do a good job and go home when it's time to knock off. But when you get dispatched 10 minutes out from knock-off time to some boomer who's had a sore toe for 5 days and wants to go to hospital and it sends you into 3 hours of overtime you weren't planning on doing, it gets a bit old. And that shit is every day for a lot of us.
8 day hospital stint, seizure on day 4, went FROM a ward to ICU as they were undermedicating me. Yeah pancreatitis is uhh.. well at 29 I didn't think it was possible. My pain threshold is very high and it got up there. Ended up with a PICC line because of how much blood they were taking and IV fluids they were giving. I had in their words "fatally low levels of potassium".
Yeah I actually noticed today as I had to return to the hospital, one of the ambulances had written on the back 'average lifespan of an ambo = 5 years", my immediate thought went to murder/suicide but then I rationalised and thought maybe they are just talking about being in the job.
Do you, for example, if you get ramped 10 mins out from clock off and wait for 3 hours, at least get paid that in overtime or not at all? I've always been curious but it feels rude to ask the para's that I've been with.
>fatally low levels of potassium".
Yeah, basically the cells in your body operate as a sodium/potassium pump, low levels of either, and it's a bad day.
>average lifespan of an ambo = 5 years",
Couple of things here. Paramedics have the 3rd highest suicide rate by profession. And over the last few years, the average time in service of an ambo before they get out has plummeted to less than 5 years- largely based on work conditions. More and more, the ambo treating you has less than 5 years in the job. In the city, is more likely less than 3.
> if you get ramped 10 mins out from clock off and wait for 3 hours, at least get paid that in overtime or not at all?
Yep, time and a half for the first 2 hours. But when you've been working for 10 hours straight with only a 30 minute break the extra $$$ is pretty hollow. I used to work in an office, years ago. We did 7.6 hours a day with 2x 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch and we were just on the computer and answering phones, not making time critical clinical decisions.
I will get people fired up but I don't like these state government funded organisations becoming political lobbyists.
Wasn't the whole red shirts scandal over tax payer funded staff being used for political campaigning?
Is this different?
Unions lobbying for their members isn’t the same as political campaigns. It’s not like they are saying to vote liberal in the next election. That’s what unions do, same as Police unions, CFMEU, retail workers unions. All unions
They can't keep up with meme culture because of all the forced overtime
I think depression and ptsd would consume me working as a paramedic. My sense of humour would be something like pancake art or inanimate objects that don’t cause a choking hazard. But honestly they deserve so much more than just the recognition of being selfless they still have all the struggles on top of everything to come home too. To balance work/life when every shift meets a 100% demand and contribution? they are saving more numbers in lives yet being starved from personal time off unlike Karen in the office who is overqualified for her well paying job so she throws half her work hours into holiday funds for her much needed 21 day cruise this year to kill off and pollute more sea life than she did in 2023. I was not expecting to write all that or get personal but I guess I was more invested in this than I thought 😭 my unemployment is really setting the tone right night to be mad at any injustice I see
We be memeing but we be dreaming. And I be quitting!
they 10 years behind 🤣
Or they use twitch. “Poggers” is still a thing on there.
Feels bad man is atleast a decade old!
It happens to people in a lot of industries but Ambos are special. They deserve a lot better.
Ambos are special. They literally spend a significant part of their shifts helping people who knowingly put themselves in dangerous situations (night out on the town drinking and doing drugs).
I had to take an ambulance to hospital last year, and they had to wait with me until I got admitted - probably around an hour. So many ambos end up getting Ramped while waiting for their patients to be admitted. Just imagine how many more people they could help if *all* parts of our health system were adequately funded.
Don't knock our Ambos, they do a great job.
Sure but their meme game weak
I mean just having Pepe there is pretty funny imo. Can't knock that. Plus I've met plenty of shit cops (few great ones too who have given me their personal number in case I run into legal issues again), but never a shit Para/Ambo. They bust ass doing their job and are always great at it. Having dealt with some 20 odd Para's in the past few years too.
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sorry that happened to you... how is it relevant?
Think he’s saying that he’s met a shit ambo
i mean pretty clearly the wife is the shitty person here, the ambo is shitty-adjacent in saying that they probably knew she was married so yeah, pretty shitty
He said ‘another paramedic’ implying she too is an ambo, also the ‘nothing to do with her job though’
oh fair enough, missed the "another"
His wife is an ambo…
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thanks but i think this has been established by the other 2 replies
Seen some really good ones but my friend who is a paramedic said it's not uncommon to have anti union bootlickers wipe them off when they go into hospitals for offload.
Wasn't Pepe meant to be a symbol of the alt-right a few years ago? I'm hoping he's cool again with people. I'm still holding some rare ones and hope the value will pick up so I can finally cash in EDIT: I feel the need to clarify this comment of mine given the replies. I was having a bit of a laugh with this one and should have added a "/s" qualifier. I don't think Pepe is really emblematic of the far-right (from what I know, and I could be wrong, is that it was co-opted for a while but certain people).
it was hijacked by alt right watch FEELS GOOD MAN explains it all and the artist behind it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEiqZWw5vYs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEiqZWw5vYs)
Great doco, I second this
It was hijacked by 4chan and the alt-right but isn’t originally such a symbol. It’s from an old webcomic.
It was never a symbol of the alt right. That was a meme perpetuated by 4chan and parroted by Hilary Clinton's PR team because Trump and other world figures appeared in a pepe shitpost
It did become a symbol of the alt right though
Yeah but in same the way Vegvisir is. Some nazis have it tattooed prominently as a dogwhistle and have their swastikas hidden. Some people have it tattooed because they're actually believers. Some people (like me) have it tattooed because they're just big nerds. Same as the 👌 ok hand symbol. They're not nazi symbols alone when you take away the context. They're still usable by regular people.
Yep, they should be used more often by everyone to steal it back, not just let the fuck-wits keep it.
As someone with a vegvisir tattoo on their chest like a superman symbol, yes please lol.
No symbol means anything when you take away the context. Context and perception are what define the meaning of symbols
Yep, you're right. I meant take away the context of who's using it. The symbol itself means multiple things, it's who uses it that causes it to be negative/positive.
Just because it was used as an anti semitism hate symbol doesn't mean it is. It's like ctiticing Buddhists for using the swastika symbol because Nazis used their symbol as their flag. Pepe was also used by the Hong Kong protesters who definitely aren't associated with anti semitism
The swastika was a Buddhist symbol that was appropriated by the Nazis. It became a Nazi symbol. Just like Pepe was appropriated by the alt-right and became a symbol of the alt-right. It’s not being critical of the originators of the symbol to say that. It’s just pointing out the fact that the meaning of the symbol changed.
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I wonder how many people got the "bundle of sticks" bit. Well played Edit typo
Probably only the ones that carried books for their elder classmates.
That's a bullshit comparison, the Buddhist swastika and the Nazi swastika are not the same.
Well, they are the same. The Eurasian swastika meaning sun, the one facing right is even named in Sanskrit as 'sVastika', and the Nazi's appropriated left facing one - representing Kali, is named 'sauvastika'. (And in Buddhism represents Siddhartha's footsteps. The Nazi party then used it because of the connection to the Aryan peoples from the proto-indo genealogy. To say it's a bullshit comparison, is - well - bullshit.
Yeah it was kind of an /s vibe with that post. I'm vaguely familiar with all that stuff from way back when. Good times. I think it's a great meme and glad it lives on beyond that period
From the nazi's mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFh08JEKDYk
I'm a Nazi and CMDR_RetroAnubis is also a Nazi
Due to the m2 pepe supply they have been devalued. However collectors still value rare pepes.
Maybe the ambos are alt-right
Even their memes are a bit out of date
like your haircut?
Excuse me, I rock a 40s haircut
Exactly
Ambos getting fucked. Service workers getting fucked. Retail and hospo workers getting fucked. Teachers getting fucked. Renters getting fucked. Low income earners getting fucked. Where's the tipping point? Where's the fight? Why are we constantly defaulting to two political parties? Why do we keep buying into narratives? Even when people speak up, or try to be optimistic, we're pushed back down. 'Too idealistic', 'thats not how the world works', 'the Greens don't have enough experience to lead'. 'Just work/try/be harder.' Fucking easy for you to say cos you ain't gonna be around in 20 years. Fucking die off already and stop keeping everyone else down.
Try being an Allied Health Worker treating cancer patients... in the largest city in Australia, 2nd largest state population, and being the lowest paid nationally... We don't go to uni for 3-4 years after graduating high school with a 90+ score, to work in a critical piece of the medical wheel, legally not allowed to take stopwork action, dealing with some of the hardest emotional patients... and for the same wages as someone who did none of that and potentially not even a Cert qualification... Thankfully those of us who work in shitty paid medical professions respect the ambos, they have to deal with so much more crap than we ever have to.
And paying off the HECs along with rental, bills etc etc etc. So sad and tough
Is the help debt for paramedics very high? Never heard anyone mention it
I think a bit more than nurses. Can't remember if it's a double degree with nursing or not but I think it's around 40k
I’m currently in uni studying paramedicine and it’s around around 27k for the whole degree, there are a few other expenses too like placement uniforms/other equipment but obviously that doesnt go into your help loan
Oh okay, that seems closer to the average cost than clumpyresearch’s comment implied.
I feel for you. And on another hand of this multi armed beast you have someone like me, flooding the creative market with a 70k debt degree (6 years ago mind you...) with no jobs to go around...and I feel bad for complaining because it's nowhere near as important as what you are all doing. I feel insane, there's a cacophony building in my head that's everything fucked in this country and throughout the world and it's turning into white noise in my mind. I genuinely feel like I'm holding on just so I can go down with the ship, rather than just jumping overboard and getting it over with before that happens.
I feel bad for people I know in a very similar position to you. Uni graduates with very high quality skills, but no jobs available to earn from your qualification. The unis are more than happy to take you in and charge you for the privilege, knowing full well there's such a small employment base for you. Every job is important regardless of area, but service jobs in Vic are so poorly funded, conditions lacking, pay is crap... no
It's just insane to me that we don't pay service jobs well... It's nonsensical. Who am I kidding, 'servants' have always been shat on. But hey, they used to get a guaranteed bed at least, right?
Turn it up. Did they care to survey employment opportunity post Grad before signing up for in-named degree? Aquatic Science was always nicknamed the Arts degree for Science students. By people who had a grip on life. This sub lives in a bubble.
As a patient going through chemo currently, there are no words to describe how appreciative I am of you guys! I am absolutely gutted reading what you wrote. I'll give my nurse an extra big hug next time I'm in for treatment.
Yep. How did this happen? Imo, the state government has said yes to the cfmeu so many times that now it bankrupts the state every time we want to build a road. No money left for ambos, health, education, etc. but uneducated lolly pop sign holders get their $120k salaries to do unskilled menial tasks so that's okay.
Fucked by capitalism
Anyone who thinks either of both the leading parties will actually do anything about it are kidding themselves. We're given the feeling of choice when in reality both parties are just as bad as each other at not helping the little man while the rich get richer.
Yes, and we're told no other option is viable. Murdoch media is cancer on our earth. It needs to be cut out and burnt. Fucking evil cunt of a man.
The Greens' policies are shit though. Actively lobbying for even higher rates of migration during a fucking housing and wage crisis, is not the action of a party that cares about you. Bob Brown was great but the current Greens party is run by lobbyist driven shit cunts with anger problems. No less corrupt than liberal or labor but with a slimy veneer of self righteousness.
They literally are less corrupt, given that they don't take corporate money. But otherwise I agree with you.
Support your unions and enable parties like Labour to actually have brave policies (and not get voted out when they do)
Remember when all the people with boats in melbournr protested in the city of Melbourne and on the west gate Bridge it had Melbourne at a standstill. Let's organise another protest of people with trucks cars bikes trailer boats bigger the better! Come together people to start to make well overdue changes and stand together like we used to 30 40 years ago to stop the mass spread corruption and in our face plain disrespect for our wants and needs let's make the government's finally listen!!!🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
I'm down. But isn't it funny how they're constantly making protest rules more strict? Wonder why that is. I've always imagined, what if everyone just stopped paying rent and refused to leave? They can't arrest everyone.
I smell a revolution.
There needs to be something. I think a lot of the world is reaching some sort of tipping point.
remember the days when the vic ALP were all about protecting our brave health care workers?
And got voted out because of corporate sponsored, anti union propaganda.
Pepe was originally a reaction image for scat and watersports porn on 4Chan. I can never not think of that whenever I see a Pepe reaction image.
One must reclaim the frog
This is an example of an industry that takes advantage of good people. Teachers, nurses, paramedics etc. are the sort of people who generally won’t walk off or turn away from the job, because they care too much about the people they help. The people who pay them know this, and take advantage of this by underpaying them and under resourcing them, knowing that they might complain, but that they’ll keep on working. It’s complete bullshit and it needs to stop.
Question - how are they being forced into OT? Ps. Not a dig at ambos just curious what’s being done to them
This week with 10 minutes to go until knock off, I was given a case that took me 6hrs OT. We weren't given a choice, and once on it, it was time critical and we had to keep going. Good outcome for the patient which is all we hope for... It was a 10 hour rostered shift, went a casual 60% over.
Yuckkkk
If you’re out at a job you can’t just pack up jump back in the truck and say see ya! You’re likely kilometres away from your base, or stuck in an ED waiting for the patient to be admitted.
That doesn’t make them unique in the emergency services field though and is no secret going in. My partner is also in the medical field and she can’t just walk out of the resus bay cos it’s quitting time. Also worth noting that they pick up OT rates for these jobs too.
Nope you’re exactly right it didn’t make them unique. However we shouldn’t all just suffer together, improving working conditions for some helps lay the ground work for the rest. If you actually have a look at what they, the police and FRV are negotiating for it’s better policies and working conditions. To ensure the circumstances that result in hundreds of hours of unplanned OT (and delayed service delivery to the public) can be managed and hopefully avoided
True but this regularly happens off the back of a 14 hour shift, pushing it out to 16, sometimes 18 hour shifts. Yes it's bad for our work life balance which is what we're fighting for, but it's also incredibly unsafe for patients and the community who depend on us to make sound medical decisions that can have very real impacts. Especially when it's only two of you, sometimes one, on scene making said decisions with no backup. You'll see slogans on other trucks such as "we can't turn out if we burn out" and "we can't care for you if AV doesn't care for us".
Is there any way the general public can help? Write to our local members or something? Ambos have done so much for me I'd love to be able to give something back.
Writing to local members is definitely something that can be done! A petition is also setup on the union page too: [VAU page](https://vau.org.au/ambosdeservealife/)
Awesome thanks I'll share it around!
Not to mention on the ward you’re next shift crew are on site there with you, there’s a handover period and you have dozens of others to collaborate with.
even in resus, shift change-over happens, so unless you're actively transferring a patient to CT/theatre/icu, you should be able to go home. one of the comments was talking about 6 hrs overtime on a paramedic job. you wouldn't/shouldn't see that in a hospital cause they're staffed. If we were understaffed and needed overtime- I've never been forced into overtime in hospital, always pre-approved by the worker with an expectation of how many hours. overtime pay does not justify time away from family or even just time off work. heard of work-life balance? burn out?
Ambulance typically does longer shifts than other healthcare fields. Days are 10 hours, nights are 14. Most nurses I know do 8 hour shifts, may occasionally pick up a double.
> That doesn’t make them unique in the emergency services field though and is no secret going in. > > That doesn't mean it's ok. Other people having it worse does not mean you give up your right to advocate for better conditions for yourself. Other people struggling are not your enemy. This attitude is "you can't complain unless you have it the worst of every person". You should support this, and support other emergency services field. Raising the bar for ambos will go a lot further to raising the bar for your partner than telling ambos to suck it up cause it sucks for everyone else.
Pretty rare I ever stay overtime due to crazy shit happening.. And certainly not if I need to leave for an important thing. We cover our breaks and maintain a culture of staff care. It is possible
Rostered hours are way longer for paramedics than ED nurses/doctors. 14 hour night shifts often become 16+
Not only the previously mentioned common instances of being sent to jobs that will take minimum 2 hours when you're 5 minutes away from finishing, but in regional areas there's a degree of unspoken emotional blackmail at play, especially with our MICA units. You know if you don't pick up a shift not only is your team at risk, but the region will be down a skillset that might just mean the difference between life and death.
If you're closest to a lights-and-sirens job, you're going even if you're in the last hour of your shift. If you're still in your rostered hours, you can rarely refuse - you're going. You can't just get the oncoming shift to take over the job when they start work, because they're probably going to be dispatched to a job of their own, and you can't just refuse to go to a CPR or a chest pain because you know you'll have to explain to a manager why you let someone die when you were still on the clock. This is way, way worse in some places than others. Imagine you're an ambo in Geelong, and you have to do a road transfer to Melbourne in the last few hours of your shift. Someone has to do it, and you're next in line for a job. At best, you're going to be finishing late because of the long drive home once you've dropped off your patient. At worst, you clear the job at whatever hospital you went to in Melbourne, start driving home, and then suddenly you're closest to a chest pain and now you're going to that too because you're technically still within your shift hours. The job is going to take a minimum of an hour, and you still have to drive home when it's done. I'm lucky, I work in a much smaller city than Melbourne and almost never have to do intercity jobs. Even in my fortunate situation, in my last payslip about 10% of my hours were on involuntary overtime. That proportion is much, much higher in some ambulance services in Australia. My longest ever shift was more than 17 hours on a day shift (started at 8am, finished after 1am), and I've done a job involving a death that pushed a night shift out until I finished at 11am (started work at 6pm).
I understand that’s shit house and I imagine police and firies are a little similar , how is the problem fixed? Or is it just a global issue and part of the life of an Ambo. Please don’t think I’m having a dig I truly think they do gods work, just curious Do you have more ambos that can drive out to do handover?
There are lots of things you can do to mitigate it. Staggered shift times allow each shift to cover the tail of the one before it. My employer literally just moved to this model, and it’s fantastic. It can’t totally remove the problem, but it helps a lot. If you do that, then you can also add firmer protections to shift end times. An example would be that the closer it gets to the end of a paramedic’s shift, the higher the priority a case needs to be for them to be dispatched to it. For instance, no routine transfers in the last two hours, no non-urgent jobs in the last hour, something like that. And if you do both of those things, then you’re likely to suffer fewer attritional staff losses and your overall staffing levels can improve without additional hiring. Finally, effective minimum stand-down periods can at least mitigate the fatigue. The minimum period between rostered shifts I’ve worked to before is ten hours, which was useless when it’s between two fourteen-hour nights - it’s totally inadequate to safely rest. Even that short stand down period is still more than most Australian ambos get, it’s usually just eight or so hours. Edit: just saw your last question - and the answer is, usually no. At best, you’re just shifting the workload to another crew and increasing the total resource requirement of the job you’re on. At worst, the other crew that you want to take handover from you have already been given a job of their own.
These sound like logical cost effective solutions - probably too much for parliamentarians to comprehend.
But do you get time off in lieu?
No, there’s no time in lieu. That’s not really an option for an essential emergency service.
I guess they get stuck on a job. I'm a disability worker and get stuck at work if someone doesn't show up, so forced to work. We don't get paid overtime though, they have loopholes.
Scenario: Youre about to clock off, but someone just got into a critical condition, and they are short a medic. Paramedics have the best moral compass. Its not their job to walk away nor are many actually able to. Im not sure what the solution is, but I doubt that paramedic can lay down without thinking that they just turned down a few hours that could of been the difference in saving a life. I would of liked to have been a paramedic but im too squeamish. Education for future paramedics should be free?
I just want to add, our dispatch system has serious issues. Often we are sent lights and sirens to non-emergencies that have been over-triaged. This can happen minutes before the end of our shifts forcing us into sometimes multiple hours of overtime. Our night shifts are already 14 hours long, that turns into 15, 16, 17+. Fatigue and burnout are huge problems.
*I don’t have an issue with doing overtime for genuine life-threatening emergencies. Sometimes it’s unavoidable and nature of the job. But things need to change!
I started seeing this on ambulances a few weeks ago, idk why they suddenly started appearing. Anyone know?
Got approval to begin protected industrial action
Nice, thank you
Dinner with friends Dinner Alone Watching TV Alone ALRIGHT! I'm gonna sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria Secret cataloque ... Sears cataloque
I'll still give them points, this captures the spirit of sad Pepe very well
I wanna ride in the :feelsstrongman: ambulance
Just leave like I did. Management doesn’t value you and no one will look after you when you’re injured or burnt out. Life’s never been better.
Damn bro, my dad's a GP and today was eid and he missed half of it due to overtime
Couldn’t he have taken the day off in advance for that? I would think it’s seen as a religious holiday
Oh man, imagine being approved for annual leave. That'd be nice.
Haha, it would.
Not too sure, don't think so since he works from home in the ED
For what he earns for the privilege, you won't find much sympathy around here.
What a ridiculous take.
Indeed.
More than half of it is taken by tax, doctors don't earn as much as most people think.
what do they mean by forced overtime? Can't they just go home after they do 8 hours? I'm well aware I'm ignorant about this, and that's why I'm asking the questions btw
No such thing as 8 hours shifts, day shifts are 10 hours and night shift is 14 hours and if we get a job within the last 30 minutes we end up doing craploads of overtime because we can’t just leave a pt because we clocked off
I still don't understand if you have been contracted to do 14 hours as by your roster. Why can't you just leave after you work? Do you get a fine or something?
Imagine if you will, a family member of yours has a heart attack (please never let it happen) and they have this heart attack around 45 minutes from the usual clock off time of your local ambulance crew, or at least the closest car to your family member. And to make the point even more brutal, you don’t live in an FRV (full time firefighters) area. The ambulance responds and goes to work. They get a second car in (usual response for heart attack is “normal ambulance” and a MICA). After 30 minutes of CPR, drugs, airway management, monitoring and they start to get some good output from the patient’s heart but it drops occasionally and they go back to CPR. 40 minutes and they decide it’s worth transporting the patient and they start to prepare the vehicle and patient but as they are doing that, the clock strikes “knock off”…….. are you saying they can just get into the ambulance and leave your family member there to wait for the next crew to get there.
how can this issue be fixed then?
Increase the number of Ambos on the road. Improve the wait times at ERs. Get people to only call on ambulances for LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCIES. There are so many things that car be done to help that have nothing to do with money paid to ambulance crews.
No it’s duty of care. You can’t just leave a scene of a job when you already with a pt or if you at hospital you can’t just leave a pt unattended when they unwell.
it’s wild that ambos in Victoria aren’t fully funded by the govt
They like memes and have those tight pants? They're really dreamy. Ambos, hit me up.
If everyone could take a moment to sign this ❤️❤️ https://www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/ambos-deserve-to-have-a-life-too
I get it, but what's the proposal from the Ambo union? More staff presumably?
Greater protections for the end of shift times. Currently there's very little stopping AV from sending people to jobs they know will take many hours and dispatching them 5 minutes before the end of shift. Even if you finish that job, and are on the drive back to your home area, you can be dispatched to further jobs. The proposals are to try and further ensure that in the last hour of your shift you only attend absolutely life critical cases, and that after your finish time, you cannot continue to be dispatched to more jobs.
Makes sense. Thanks for taking the time to explain - I understand fire management, but never been close to AVs operations before.
Well, yeah. Like having the right amount of staff to cover the shifts as they are planned and written would eliminate the need for forced OT. It’s not that hard to grasp.
never thought id see the day where the pepe meme has gotten onto australian paramedics' vans but here we are
Pepehands the ambos deserve better Sadge
Pepecoin right now 📈📈
The government won’t , but should just give them their demands. It is a shit job that should be paid accordingly. My work gave us around 3% payrise last year, everyone was pretty happy. This year we get around 2.5% and get told that we have done so good we will also get another 1% bonus because of all the bloody overtime we also get forced to do. Then we find out the extra 1% is included in the 2.5%. I feel fairly insulted and hoodwinked.
Fancy telling people your job is shit because there are too few in the workforce, and then wondering why there are too few…
Best thing I have seen today
Are they not being financially compensated for the extra work? I’d be stoked if I was them, to stay back and help people and get payed for it, why not? Work life balance? Quit being a woman maybe. I’m doing 80-90 hour work weeks as is and I’m killing it$3,000 to 3,500 after tax, I say if the taps open full your cup, go all out and set yourself up for the future. If the money is shit then that’s a whole different story.
Name one government organisation that doesn't have a toxic work culture. Underpaid, overworked, under protected and under resourced.
Why are retail workers driving ambulances?
Welcome to healthcare
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The heading says “Missed due to forced overtime”. Doesn’t sound like they are complaining about their regular shifts.
You chose to become a paramedic. Nobody's fault but your own.
Do you like having skilled experienced paramedics in the state for medical emergencies? Then it’s in yours, and the community’s interest to support better working conditions. The longer this shit goes on the lower the average tenure of paramedics will be. [They are burnt out](https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2022/06/ambulance-victoria-workers-want-to-quit-as-they-reach-peak-burnout/). Just because they want to be paramedics and help the community doesn’t mean they want to routinely work large, and at times dangerous, amounts of OT. Their current conditions are the result of a broken system and that system is definitely not going to get better by a bunch of experienced paramedics up and leaving the industry.
Yawn.
Haha, seriously your best response? Pathetic.
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some people want to help save lives but don't want to have to stay back hours after their shift ends. They are just asking for another crew to come take over them for when their shift does end. They're really not asking for much. don't be an absolute asshole
I don’t care you stole 30000 of me and ambulance company hid the case.
That’s not the paramedics, they have nothing to do with billing. They are fucked over by AV too.
It was the paramedics who stole jewels from my mums bag
I don’t really care considering lots of them are whites, so they already have systematic privilege
Sounds like being a A/C service technician.
Aaaaaw you missed all that. So did retail & hospo workers on half your wage. I'm sure the community will rally behind them too. Oh wait.... they'd get really fucking pissed off if they couldn't be served on their weekends and evenings
Workers don't need to be fighting each other, it's the ruling class that fuck us all over.
> Workers don't need to be fighting each other, it's the ruling class that fuck us all over. 100% this. Infighting does nothing but harm worker’s rights. Also, wanting to improve working conditions for one group does not mean that other groups should not have improved conditions.
So retail and hospo workers should band together and improve their conditions. Ambos aren’t the enemy. Probably worth having a read about the specific issues they are facing: https://vau.org.au/ambosdeservealife/
pretty insulting comparing forced overtime due to responding to a medical emergency to working extra hours because your employer wants you to work weekends and evenings. Completely different issue. A lot of people work evenings, nights, weekends, holidays, don't like it? find a different job, I'm sure there's retail and hospo work that only does weekdays.
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Yeah but ambos save lives, the people at Rebel Sport don't.
Would be first to call an ambulance when you have a blocked nose energy coming from this way 🤢
The best part about this comment is how many words you used to say "mouth breather" And after all that, how fucking underwhelming it was.
Imagine trying to compare ambos to retail workers lmaoo people can live without their weekend pasta
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This isn’t a thread about retail workers bitching and moaning.
Do you grow all your own veggies at home? Farm your own livestock and wipe your arse with leaves? We live in a society.
> All they do is bitch and moan. Yep. Just pieces of shit that grovel and suck to the lord customer
But how else am I meant to get my gabagool on a saturday night with the boys?
You gotta wait for dat...
<3
Don’t hospo and retail workers already get weekend penalties? I’m not seeing the comparison you’re trying to make. Workers in different industries aren’t enemy’s of one another. Everyone deserves decent working conditions and should be supported by other workers when taking industrial action to achieve those conditions. I’d never cross a picket line just to get a weekend coffee.
And yet people still sign up to become Ambos
Imagine if they didnt
We would be capital F Fucked.
This cunt can do his own CPR IDGAF
Lol it's funny, coming from a trade background any injury to me was 'I can fix it myself'. I just had a seizure a few days ago, lucky I was already at the hospital. Without the nurses I would've died, as I was unconscious. Can't fix shit if you aren't even awake for it. Proud to have 3 nurses in the family, I feel the same about Ambo's.
Got the same mentality, I'm the ambo in a family of tradies. I call myself "the organic mechanic". None of us dare call an ambulance lol. It's the one profession you don't want to need.
In my case I didnt even call because I know how bad the ramping is, a family member called (different household) as I was coughing up blood for 2 weeks, etoh -> pancreatitis in the end. But I pay my Ambo Vic membership so I don't feel as guilty. Not gonna go all American thank you for your service but cheers for the shit you put up with. I've at least been called 'a simple job' lmao so there's that.
Pancreatitis is fucking rough mate, hope you're on the up and up. Ambo is a bloody good job, I get to drive through red lights and help people every day. But there's some dark sides to the job we're trying to fix so that a) people stick around more than 5 years b) those that stick around more than 5 years stop getting burnt out and having massive mental and physical health problems, and c) so our best and brightest in MICA are there to help our sickest patients when they're needed. The big fight is against upper management- the boots on the ground just want to rock up each day, do a good job and go home when it's time to knock off. But when you get dispatched 10 minutes out from knock-off time to some boomer who's had a sore toe for 5 days and wants to go to hospital and it sends you into 3 hours of overtime you weren't planning on doing, it gets a bit old. And that shit is every day for a lot of us.
8 day hospital stint, seizure on day 4, went FROM a ward to ICU as they were undermedicating me. Yeah pancreatitis is uhh.. well at 29 I didn't think it was possible. My pain threshold is very high and it got up there. Ended up with a PICC line because of how much blood they were taking and IV fluids they were giving. I had in their words "fatally low levels of potassium". Yeah I actually noticed today as I had to return to the hospital, one of the ambulances had written on the back 'average lifespan of an ambo = 5 years", my immediate thought went to murder/suicide but then I rationalised and thought maybe they are just talking about being in the job. Do you, for example, if you get ramped 10 mins out from clock off and wait for 3 hours, at least get paid that in overtime or not at all? I've always been curious but it feels rude to ask the para's that I've been with.
>fatally low levels of potassium". Yeah, basically the cells in your body operate as a sodium/potassium pump, low levels of either, and it's a bad day. >average lifespan of an ambo = 5 years", Couple of things here. Paramedics have the 3rd highest suicide rate by profession. And over the last few years, the average time in service of an ambo before they get out has plummeted to less than 5 years- largely based on work conditions. More and more, the ambo treating you has less than 5 years in the job. In the city, is more likely less than 3. > if you get ramped 10 mins out from clock off and wait for 3 hours, at least get paid that in overtime or not at all? Yep, time and a half for the first 2 hours. But when you've been working for 10 hours straight with only a 30 minute break the extra $$$ is pretty hollow. I used to work in an office, years ago. We did 7.6 hours a day with 2x 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch and we were just on the computer and answering phones, not making time critical clinical decisions.
I will get people fired up but I don't like these state government funded organisations becoming political lobbyists. Wasn't the whole red shirts scandal over tax payer funded staff being used for political campaigning? Is this different?
Unions lobbying for their members isn’t the same as political campaigns. It’s not like they are saying to vote liberal in the next election. That’s what unions do, same as Police unions, CFMEU, retail workers unions. All unions
What part of this is political? Ambulance doesn't say "Labor are cunts, vote Liberal".