Handover delays leading to 'tension' between paramedics and hospital staff
Hospital handover delays are causing tension between staff at emergency departments and paramedics, an ambulance board meeting has heard.
The West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) board met on Wednesday and heard that delays in handovers have seen a drop in the productivity of paramedics considerably compared to four years ago.
Director of performance and improvement, Nathan Hudson, said that in 2019 on average during a 12-hour shift an ambulance would go to between seven and eight jobs.
However, now paramedics are attending an average of four jobs per shift.
“The activity of people phoning for our service is not the issue, neither is the resources but it’s about that productivity and being able to get out to patients,” he told the board meeting.
“We’re losing for each 12-hour ambulance probably three jobs per shift. That’s significant when we have 82 vehicles at hospitals and 27 of those waiting over 60 minutes. It’s a real issue for us.
“We have to take mitigating action and have put extra hours going into winter to mitigate that patient safety risk.
“The main area of concern going into winter is the uptake of flu, Covid and norovirus which is causing the bed closures or restrictions which has a knock-on effect at the front door.”
