2023-12-19 00:43:21
Paramedical ambulance technicians from the Montreal, Laval and Montérégie regions, affiliated with the FSSS-CSN, denounce new ministerial protocols which, according to them, lead to an overload of work and force them to work overtime.
Since December 12, they must remain available to respond to a new “priority 0” call — the most urgent cases, such as a cardiorespiratory arrest — during their return trip to the barracks, even if their shift has already ended .
In the past, Urgences-santé paramedics were not assigned to a new call when they took the road to the command center and had finished their shift (if it is 4:30 p.m. and they finish at 4 p.m., for example). But since the implementation of the procedure imposed by Quebec, they may have to take charge of “priority 0” cases and work more overtime.
Result: they do not know when their shift will end, which generates “additional stress,” according to Claude Lamarche, president of the Prehospital Union, which represents paramedical ambulance technicians in Montreal and Laval. “Already, a paramedic with 12 years of experience resigned because she couldn’t stand not being able to get to daycare on time [pour récupérer ses enfants] “, he argued during a press briefing held in Montreal on Monday.
The union affirms that paramedical technicians in Montérégie must remain available until the “last second” before they “punch in” to signify the end of their shift. “When we finish a call to the hospital, the new protocol asks us to make ourselves available immediately, which means that we are not even given time to clean our stretcher, our equipment,” adds Mathieu Lacombe, vice-president of information, mobilization and union life of the Union of Paramedics and Prehospital Workers of Montérégie-CSN. “You imagine all the dangers that this can bring, both for the paramedics and for the patient. »
Jean Gagnon, representative of the prehospital sector of the FSSS-CSN, believes that these rules place paramedics in an “unsustainable” situation. “We have never been against going to save lives, except that at some point, our shift has to come to an end,” he says. “Paramedics are not made to have calls one behind the other for 12 hours all year round. »
The Prehospital Union reports that since the protocol was implemented on December 12, teams from Montreal and Laval have reported twice that they had to stay longer on duty after the end of their shift because of the new protocol. Such a situation has occurred once, according to Urgences-santé, which serves these territories.
Justified measures, according to Quebec
The Ministry of Health and Social Services (MSSS) explains that these new protocols aim to standardize practices in the various regions of Quebec. In the past, each command or communications center determined what type of call it assigned to a paramedic who had completed their shift and was en route to the barracks.
In an interview with Le Devoir, the director of pre-hospital emergency services at the MSSS, Paul Levesque, indicated that one region, for example, asked paramedical ambulance technicians to take a “priority 0, 1, 2 and 3” call after the end of their shift. “Everywhere in Quebec, “priorities 0” are now being assigned. We no longer assign anything other than “priorities 0”,” he says. According to the department, these calls represent approximately 5% of all calls received and “do not always occur at the end of the shift.”
The MSSS also confirms that a paramedic who has entrusted his patient to hospital staff “falls into partial availability”, which means that once his stretcher is released, he can be assigned to a “priority 0” call for the first 15 minutes, then to a “priority 0” or “priority 1” call for the next 19 minutes. A team can, however, make itself “totally unavailable” during the period of cleaning and disinfection of its equipment “in situations where contamination is excessive,” specifies the MSSS.
“What happened before was that ambulances in a good part of Quebec, when they were in the emergency room, were not available to respond to calls even when they had released their patients,” explains M. . Levesque.
The director believes that these new protocols are justified in order to “find ambulance availability” for urgent cases – “people who are dying,” he emphasizes.
Urgences-santé wants to “mitigate the negative effects”
Urgences-santé claims to be aware of the “dissatisfaction of paramedics in the field” and “perfectly understand” that calls after the end of shifts can “generate stress”. The organization says it has put in place measures to “mitigate the negative effects of this new way of doing things”.
“As soon as there is a team whose shift is over and who are caught in this situation [la prise en charge d’un nouvel appel de “priorité 0”]”, we assign another ambulance, a second, to relieve it as soon as possible so that they can return home,” said its spokesperson, Stephane Smith.
A manager is also “automatically notified,” he adds. “Example, the team has We will definitely ensure that they can return to the operational center so as not to put workers in danger. »
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