In Lang Lang, help is a cert

LAST week I arced up a little when I read the ‘ambo agony’ story about response times for ambulances in the metropolitan area including the Shire of Cardinia and City of Casey.
When you think about it you wonder what is really needed to get the average response time for the metropolitan area below the benchmark of 15 minutes.
Probably an ambulance station on every corner when you allow for peak hour traffic in the city and long distances in the outer suburban and semi-rural areas.
But it’s a cert you will get help within two or three minutes after making a call if you live in Lang Lang.
Out of town a little longer, but fairly quickly.
Australia is blessed, particularly in rural areas, with what we call volunteers.
We have teams of people, such as members of the Country Fire Authority, who are on standby to respond quickly to fire outbreaks and road accidents, and a myriad of other things, such as a kitten caught in a tree or down a drainpipe.
Lang Lang has a community emergency response team run by trained volunteers rostered to be on standby and I can vouch for its effectiveness.
This is a system that provides a light vehicle and trained people with life support skills and equipment.
When a 000 call is received this team in the town is immediately alerted and can be with a patient in two or three minutes in most cases.
It provides life support to injured and ill people until the ambulance arrives.
I recall writing articles about the CERT team when it was launched and thought it wasn’t a bad idea.
I didn’t get too excited, but early one morning two years ago, my brother rang and said he had called the ambulance to our mother who was 90.
I was heading to the office and the ambulance coming from Pakenham passed me with lights and siren going so I turned around.
I found she had pneumonia and was barely breathing.
The early response team was there and its value hit home to us all.
I have attended many accidents and believe that I have seen people die who might have been saved had an ambulance paramedic been there on time. But they can’t do the impossible.
One thing I have seen is that paramedics will not always immediately move injured or ill people.
I once criticised an ambulance driver at an accident because 10 minutes had gone by and two seriously injured people were still not on a stretcher.
He calmly told me they had to be stabilised and were just as well where they were.
I received a call to an accident near Mt Evelyn and was one of the first there.
I found a panel van with seven or eight people in it had rolled on a bend.
One young man was dying because his jaw and upper throat were crushed and he couldn’t breathe.
I was given permission by three people to take the centre out of my ballpoint pen and force it into his air duct, hopefully to get some air into his lungs, and I was terrified.
This was about to start when we heard the ambulance siren.
The paramedic had suitable equipment, and carried out the procedure, but it was too late and the young man died.
Had there been a CERT team in the town he might have lived. He at least would have had a chance.
I have been involved in similar stories about ambulance response times over the years, with a similar theme to the story last week, they come up every so often, and no doubt we all want an ambulance to show up immediately.
But as procedures improve, traffic increases, and my view is we will never do much better than a 15-minute average.
I can’t become involved in the argument of working hours and conditions of paramedics because I have no details of how long they work.
But I know about the conditions, and that seeing people injured and dying, is a tough call. We should pay them as much as we can and we should see that they have reasonable time off.
But my view is the government should look more closely at supporting early response teams across the state.
On most occasions they will keep a person alive until the fully-equipped ambulance arrives.
If they can’t keep someone breathing the person probably wouldn’t have survived anyway. They can operate with a small vehicle or even a motorcycle and at a cost-effective level.