IT WAS five hours after he dealt with the heartbreaking deaths of two children in separate emergencies, minutes apart, before NSW Ambulance call taker Matt* said he was relieved of his duties, pulled aside and asked if he was OK. He immediately fell to pieces.
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“I had a breakdown and I said ‘I can’t do this job anymore’,” Matt said.
A resignation form was placed in front of him and he was told “bring it back on Monday”, he said.
“They don’t know how to handle people who are suffering.”
Matt spent 28 years as a police officer but said his six years as a call taker for NSW Ambulance had a much greater negative effect on him.
“It’s what I’d describe as brutal,” he said of his time at the Northern Control Centre (NCC), in Charlestown.
“Most of the time calls were going non-stop.”
The NCC takes emergency calls from people in distress, covering an area from the Hawkesbury in the south to the Queensland border in the north. The calls are received at a centre in Charlestown, with up to five call takers working at a time.
Matt said, under his industrial award, he was entitled to one meal break during his 10-hour shift. There was also a “gentlemen’s agreement” to give call takers a 10-minute break per hour, but only if possible, he said.
On what would become his final day at the NCC, Matt said he answered a call from a woman with an unresponsive child.
“A woman called with a three-year-old not breathing and the father was doing CPR,” he said. “I was getting information to Grandma and she was passing it on to Dad about compressions.”
Matt said there was at least a 20-minute wait for the ambulance, and he stayed on the line giving instructions until paramedics arrived.
“While I was waiting for them I heard a little voice and I thought ‘they got him back’, and I said ‘who is that I hear?’ and it was his five-year-old sister and she was asking what’s wrong with him,” he said.
The little boy died.
Within 30 minutes Matt had taken a second horrific emergency call, this time about a five-year-old boy, who also died.
It was about five hours later that Matt was spoken to about the calls, he said.
It was during that conversation Matt disclosed the trouble he was having, and was given the resignation form and told to hand it in if he wanted to leave.
Matt now spends his time between medical appointments, battling for an outcome to his compensation case and is working with numerous professionals to try to lead a normal life.
“I’m on three different antidepressants,” he said.
“Anything that causes anxiety brings on the tremors.”
He criticised the workload at the NCC
“It’s the frequency of the calls (that’s the problem),” he said. “It was job after job and apart from the 10 minute breaks that you didn’t always get, it’s constant.”
He also said there was little support when workers were struggling.
“(One colleague) said he’d seen me some weeks prior and said I looked terrible but at that time he knew I was going on leave shortly so he didn’t say anything,” he said.
The secretary of the Health Services Union NSW, Gerard Hayes, slammed a shortage of staff at the state’s control centres.
“Ambulance control centres are extremely stressful work environments,” he said.
“As caseload increases, so does the pressure on staff, who know that a simple error can mean an adverse outcome on patients.”
Mr Hayes said workers were required to “self report” when they were struggling.
“But not all workers are confident enough to put up their hand when they need to take a break from the phones,” he said.
“If there is a high number of calls coming in, then workers are simply instructed to stay at their phones and plough on.”
He called on the state government to hire more call takers.
“There are not enough call takers to fill normal vacancies as they arise,” he said.
“The supervisors in the room often have to take over dispatch duties rather than provide oversight, including providing high-level clinical advice during critical incidents.
”Given the risk to life from mistakes in emergency responses, and the growing evidence of the psychological toll on emergency service workers from inadequate staffing and resources, this issue cannot be ignored any longer.”
NSW Ambulance did not directly respond when asked if there was a need for more call takers at the Northern Control Centre, but did say: “NSW Ambulance constantly evaluates staffing levels to ensure sufficient call taker staff numbers to meet call demands”.
“Call takers within the Northern Control Centre are part of a statewide call taking cohort and Triple Zero (000) calls to ambulance can be answered in any one of four control centres around the state,” NSW Ambulance said.
The organisation acknowledged the “extraordinary job” call takers did under intense pressure.
NSW Ambulance said call centre supervisors were selected on merit and capability and “a core part of their role includes identifying and facilitating appropriate and timely support for staff who may be under stress”.
“If control centre supervisors are aware that a staff member has undergone a stressful or traumatic call, steps are immediately taken to offer assistance and this interaction is recorded in the Staff Support Activation and Significant Events Support Register with appropriate action taken to support the staff member as required.
“A range of other measures, including formal debriefings, taking staff off call taking duties, providing them with time out and counselling from senior managers, professional counsellors, peer support officers or chaplaincy support is also available to staff 24/7 as needed.
“All control staff undertake training in triaging and managing Triple Zero (000) calls, skills which assist them to recognise and provide appropriate support for their peers if they identify an issue.”
*Name was changed. lallan@fairfaxmedia.com.au
