"Tea break" Ambulance driver....

[Johnboy]

I was shocked by this case, where a Tomintoul based ambulance driver refused to respond to a 999 call because he was on his tea break. The call had come from the partner of a young lady who had suffered a blood clot and had stopped breathing. They lived about 800yds from the ambulance station. By the time the next nearest ambulance arrived (from Grantown) the lady was dead.

The Scottish Ambulance Service suspended Owen McLauchlan, (the driver) and launched an investigation into his conduct. They have now concluded that he should keep his job, but should also have more training!!

I find that decision astounding. Although I'm not in possession of all the facts in this case, I think I would have quickly concluded that here was a young man, who was obviously not well suited for employment in the Ambulance Service.

[Georgeios]

Man slaughter. If the had done his job, she might still be with us.

[SMEE]

Well...i hope the selfish **** of a driver suffers huge guilt coz of this. A poor person lost their life coz of his selfishness. In my last job, if someone came in in the middle of my dinner break....ad get of my ass and deal with them. In fact....we didnt get breaks as such, more grabbed a cuppa and a bite to eat when we could.

PS....that was in the high pressure world of the lesuire industry!

Edited January 3, 2011 by SMEE

[DALNEIGHCALEY]

Well...i hope the selfish **** of a driver suffers huge guilt coz of this. A poor person lost their life coz of his selfishness. In my last job, if someone came in in the middle of my dinner break....ad get of my ass and deal with them. In fact....we didnt get breaks as such, more grabbed a cuppa and a bite to eat when we could.

PS....that was in the high pressure world of the lesuire industry!

The person would have lost their life wether the ambulance driver had gone straight away or waited til his unpaid break was over .

[Scotty]

I wasnt going to comment, wondering at first whether there were some extenuating circumstances or whether the same sort of bureaucracy that dictates ambulances called in Inverness sometimes have to come from Dingwall might have been a factor ..... but after reading the P&J article here: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1990596?UserKey= it appears that none of that is the case and the guy simply said no, get someone else, I am on a break.

There is no evidence to suggest the woman would have survived but she sure as hell would have had a better chance if the ambulance from 20 seconds away had attended than having to wait for one that was 20 minutes away.

I am sorry, but this person is not fit to lick the soles of the shoes of his colleagues after they have trudged through a dog park let alone keep his job !!!

[DALNEIGHCALEY]

Quoted from a comment left on the P&J website

As always, the whole story has not been released to the public, and probably never will be by the Scottish Ambulance Service. All workers are entitled to a Rest Period during their work shift, no matter who they work for. In the Scottish Ambulance Service, the management decided many years ago to stop paying their staff for this break, reducing their paid weekly hours from 40 to 37.5, and then asked whether the staff would be prepared to still be available during this unpaid rest period. This period does not have a defined time to take, purely on a "when possible" during your shift. It can come at the end of a shift, or not at all if you are busy. Not surprisingly, a lot of ambulance staff said that they would be unavailable during this UNPAID period. It is agreed by SAS Management that no calls should be put through to a staff member who is unavailable. Therefore, this Technician should never have been asked to respond if he has signed up to the UNPAID 30 minute rest period. To suspend a member of staff for following Scottish Ambulance Service MANAGEMENT Rules is unbelievable - It is also important to note that as Frontline EMERGENCY staff are leaving the Ambulance Swervice just now, their jobs are not being filled - as a cost saving exercise !! Its a pity that the public are not being told that by the Scottish Ambulance Service - how does the public feel about single manned ambulances that cannot transport a patient arriving at their door ??

[+DoofersDad]

Well...i hope the selfish **** of a driver suffers huge guilt coz of this. A poor person lost their life coz of his selfishness. In my last job, if someone came in in the middle of my dinner break....ad get of my ass and deal with them. In fact....we didnt get breaks as such, more grabbed a cuppa and a bite to eat when we could.

PS....that was in the high pressure world of the lesuire industry!

The person would have lost their life wether the ambulance driver had gone straight away or waited til his unpaid break was over .

Maybe, but the driver was not to know that at the time.

DC, I take the points in your following post and if we accept that the call should not have gone through to him in the first place, the fact is that it did, and personally I can't see how anybody could refuse in those circumstances. By all means complain about receiving the call afterwards. The rules being what there are I don't think there can be a legal case for sacking him but if I was him I'd be having difficulty living with my conscience.

[CaleyD]

Whilst I don't agree with the actions of the Ambulance Driver, I do think it comes down to more than a simple decision on whether or not to answer a call when on your break. Had he answered the call and been involved in an incident whilst doing so...including administering any treatment...and the person still died, then there's every chance he could have been facing an investigation into whether or not he was fit to be working as he'd not taken his mandatory break/s.

Yes, he does have to live with the "what if", and whilst we don't know what was going through his head at the time of receiving the call, you have to wonder if the bureaucracy that is so readily used to hammer people who do such jobs is not the largest part of the problem.

It's not that long ago we had the situation with the fireman who couldn't use the equipment they had to hand to rescue someone as they hadn't been signed off to use it in those specific circumstances. Chances are, they could have used it and got a positive result, but had they used it and failed then they would have been hammered for it.

The old adage of "Better to have tried and failed, than never have tried at all" is very much a thing of the past in regards to our Emergency Service Personnel. I'm afraid it is the public who are quick to point the finger, lay blame and seek to sue at the slightest thing who are very much the root of the issue.

[Johnboy]

I used to believe that people actually took up careers as firemen, nurses, doctors, paramedics, etc, out of some kind of desire to help their fellow human beings,and possibly even save lives. A bit like those who become vets because they love and want to care for animals.

I obviously couldn't have been more naive or misguided with my beliefs.

[Scotty]

What gets me is the apparent callousness. I am sorry, but if I had the capability and/or training to attempt to save the life of someone nearby then t-break or not, consequences or not, that is what I would do. If my employers then tried to nail me for being caring and compassionate then I am sure it is they who would come off looking like heartless b****** not me !

I understand the unpaid breaks issue and I understand that employees in the service may be getting royally shafted by bureaucracy and cuts and are completely scunnered at times. That is a whole other issue and one where I think the majority of the public at large would come down heavily on the side of the emergency services. As far as I am concerned, Police, Fire, Ambulance/Paramedic personnel, Nurses, Mountain Rescue, Servicemen and women etc should all be handsomely paid for the dangerous and unglamorous work they have to do, the sights they have to see and the carnage they have to clean up or repair. It is far more than "just a job".

However, in this instance it seems to be nothing more than an excuse ..... If it were in a big city where there was an option for another vehicle or where things are somewhat more impersonal I could understand it more .... but we are talking of a small community where pretty much everyone knows everyone else and even if this "incomer" maybe didnt know everyone, it is reasonable to assume he may have known of that family given that the dead woman's Grandfather was a previous Ambulance driver in the village, her sister is an Ambulance technician and her brother-in-law is a paramedic. Being in the same profession tends to draw folk together in a social sense.

I just cannot comprehend of a situation where, if I had the training and was 'on the scene' I would have chosen the same action (or inaction to be more accurate).

[Yngwie]

There are still good examples Johnboy, like the member of this forum who (off duty and unpaid) jumped into a river to save someone's life.

[bauhaus]

Pity that people jump to conclusions.

I know many of the Ambulance people, and as far as this is concerned it has not been properly reported by the media.

Yes unfortunately a young woman lost her life. Apparently if the Tomintoul Technician had responded it would have made little difference - the woman already being deceased by the time her partner found her. However we will never know.

What understanding I have of this is the the Technician didnt say NO to responding. The response centre phoned Tomintoul but realised the Technician was on his signed off break, he answered, and they said sorry we should have phoned Grantown!!!, They didnt say what was going on and phoned Grantown straight away who responded immediately. Paramedic helicopter was also called out, and the noise of the helicopter over Tomintoul made the Tomintoul Technician come out of the station to see what was happening 800 yards away.

Pick the bones out of that. Ambulance and Paramedics have been getting shafted for years, and working hours etc of the EU is shafting the Ambulance service right now. They have less money to service the north, like everyone else, but they are now getting told staff in outlying areas cannot remain on standby. This then means they are covering witrh skeleton crews continually, with no money to pay extra staff, and no money to train more. Catch 22. Misreporting does not help matters.

[Johnboy]

Somehow I find the press's version of events more believable than those of Bauhaus.

There's an updated story in today's P&J see here

I would find it very hard to accept that all or any of the comments from the deceased lady's family have been mis-reported.

[12th Man]

Employment law seem to have more clout than attempting to save a life. Someone is dieing, but I'm legally entitled to a tea break.

I recall talking to an ambulance technician who was undergoing training as a paramedic and was staying in the same hotel as me whilst working away, she said that there was a fair jump in pay and responsibilities between an ambulance driver who would have only received the basic training and a paramedic. (our discussion was prior to this incident)

Sadly, the woman may not have been saved if the driver had attended or not,even a paramedic cant do much for the likes of a pulmonary aneurysm.

He still had a moral duty to turn up though.

[The Mantis]

There are still good examples Johnboy, like the member of this forum who (off duty and unpaid) jumped into a river to save someone's life.

And whose account of what happened is pretty similar to bauhaus' story. He's probably seeing this thread and tactfully avoiding getting involved.

[old caley girl]

Why is no one asking why a young probationer technician was single manned without colleague back up? This guy while morally wrong has been hung out to dry.The issue of breaks has been a bugbear in the sas for a long time and this has been an accident waiting to happen issue for ages.In fact a bet a few of the crews are thinking it could have been any one of them! Im sorry for the family of this lady but I dont think this one guy would have had the skills or training to even start to save her as already stated he was not a paramedic.There probably needs to be a good look at rural medical cover now.

[Alex MacLeod]

Why is no one asking why a young probationer technician was single manned without colleague back up? This guy while morally wrong has been hung out to dry.The issue of breaks has been a bugbear in the sas for a long time and this has been an accident waiting to happen issue for ages.In fact a bet a few of the crews are thinking it could have been any one of them! Im sorry for the family of this lady but I dont think this one guy would have had the skills or training to even start to save her as already stated he was not a paramedic.There probably needs to be a good look at rural medical cover now.

Personally I think this story has been blown up by the media. We're talking an ambulance in Tomintoul, probably parked outside the guy's house. Not a depot with technicians and paramedics in one place. When the guy is called has he then to go pick up a paramedic, as is the case in other rural area's, or is he qualified to treat on his own. I would hazard a guess at the former so time would still be lost and if the guy isn't qualified to administer drugs and insert needles he isn't going to be much help.

[+DoofersDad]

My personal experience is that any press reporting is geared to a story rather than the truth. I have been a "spokesman" reported in the press from time to time or quoted by name and it is extraordinary how often they simply get things wrong or deliberately quote out of contect simply because what you tell them does not suit the story they want. All we can do is speculate as to what really happened on this occasion.

But I think CaleyD has hit the nail on the head here with the comment that the bureaucracy is at fault. The vast majority of healthcare works care very much about what they do and are more than willing to go the extra mile to help patients. The trouble is that there are so many rules and regulations these days and so many people so eager to blame when ever anything goes wrong that the system is increasingly forcing people to follow the rules. Unfortunately, if you bend the rules to help someone, you're on your own.

There was a case a while ago when someone suffered a heart attack on a USA internal flight, I think it was, and a doctor who was a passenger volunteered to help. He resuscitated the victim but in so doing broke one of the patient's ribs. The "patient", by way of thanks, then sued the doctor for damages. Worse, the doctor's insurers refused to pay the damages because the doctor was not acting in accordance with his employement and he was reprimanded by his professional body for practising without valid insurance. It is this kind of bureaucratic nonsense that often stops people behaving as their conscience tells them that they should. That may not justify some people's reluctance to do what you can to help someone in need but I think it does help to explain it.

If people have to break a few rules in order to help someone in need then surely it is about time society insisted that employers, professional bodies and the law supported them as long as they were acting with the scope of their own professional competence.

[Croylo]

In any given paper you will be lucky to get up to 40% of the truth, the rest is hearsay, gossip and or that particular papers bias on the story. Trumps greatest golf course in the P&J is a good example, or the Suns coverage of Sheridan. When I read the Tomintoul story I assumed there was a fair bit that was not reported, and the version on here makes more sense. What I cannot fathom is why a member of the family didn't run straight there to get him.

In short if he still wants to be in the job they should keep him in but obviously relocate him ffs.

[Johnboy]

This is interesting from the Scotsman 3 years ago and provides a possible explanation as to how this awful situation, and others similar have arisen.

There clearly needs to be a complete rethink in relation to how the ambulance network is financed and managed - particularly in rural areas. I inclined to suspect the SAS are attracting the wrong kind of personnel - employees, who's primary concerns are for a well paid job, which provides regular hours and regular breaks.

As Scotty says (above)working for the SAS (and other services) should not be looked on as "just a job" Hard to imagine The Mountain Rescue boys or the Lifeboat boys refusing to go and help someone in trouble just because they are "on a break"

[The Mantis]

In any given paper you will be lucky to get up to 40% of the truth, the rest is hearsay, gossip and or that particular papers bias on the story. Trumps greatest golf course in the P&J is a good example, or the Suns coverage of Sheridan. When I read the Tomintoul story I assumed there was a fair bit that was not reported, and the version on here makes more sense.

Just a couple of weeks ago there was a rescue in Glen Coe and the reporter felt obliged to state that the climbers were on the 'notorious Curved Ridge' which is absolutely gratuitous piece of sensationalism, as it's not notorious for anything. Also a relation of mine was a victim of a hit and run recently and reading the papers you wouldn't think it was the same story. The same goes for some of the teachers' pay/conditions disputes I was involved in.

[bauhaus]

Just thought I would say, 12th man commented that ambulance drivers are entitled to a tea break instead of saving someones life,.

Itsactually more a case that Europe has by law forced the newer recruits to the SAS, have to legally take a break. Thet are breaking their contract if they dont take a break, and if they respond and something goes wrong they would be up for being sacked for illegally working their break, and can be sued by client for poor judgement and Poor decision making. Whereas the older long serving SAS paramedics can be still working under their old contracts where they are PAID to respond during their break, so its part of their contract to respond no matter what. However some of these older paramedics have by choice signed new contract conditions which then excludes them from paid breaks, and then means they also are not allowed to respond when on the official breakl.

Its always Europe to blame, and because the longer serving ambulance crews were not agreeing with something they had ( paid response during breaks ) getting taken away they had the trade unions involved, with the outcome, only those who choose to agree the new contracts were excuded from responding. This creates problems with staffing levels as every day crews will be working that legally are not allowed to be called upon during their breaks. All new staff have to now sign contracts that prevent them from attending during breaks, as it is European law that forces this.

[TopSix]

I feel very sorry for the woman's family.

Is the ambulance there very busy?

[CaleyD]

I noticed in the last news article I read about this (tucked away at the very end) that the SAS had confirmed the driver had not actually been instructed/asked to attend the incident.

It would now seem that this guy has been hounded out of the area, not because he chose not to respond, but because he has a contract which stopped him getting the instruction in the first place. He's made the scapegoat whilst the SAS now embark on a major PR exercise to deflect blame from themselves.

[TopSix]

I noticed in the last news article I read about this (tucked away at the very end) that the SAS had confirmed the driver had not actually been instructed/asked to attend the incident.

It would now seem that this guy has been hounded out of the area, not because he chose not to respond, but because he has a contract which stopped him getting the instruction in the first place. He's made the scapegoat whilst the SAS now embark on a major PR exercise to deflect blame from themselves.

That explains it then.