Paramedics fighting proposed changes to air ambulance staffing

If the Ministry of Health gets its way, nurses, doctors and respiratory therapists could be joining or replacing critical care paramedics on Ornge Air Ambulances.

“This doesn’t just affect paramedics in Ornge. This is potentially redefining our entire profession, province-wide,” says Darryl Wilton, president of the Ontario Paramedic Association.

The ministry says a shortage of critical care paramedics prompted the proposed change to Ontario’s Ambulance Act, but Wilton and others suggest it is not air ambulance flights being cancelled due to staff shortages — it is hospital emergency rooms, due to a lack of nurses and, in some cases, physicians.

“Every physician we have in this province is vitally needed in the health care system and hospital system we have,” says Ornge critical care paramedic, Barb Cameron.

Wilton adds, “How would it work when we’re taking highly trained [people] out of hospitals, and putting them on the front lines of the front lines, where there’s more than enough paramedics.”

Ornge is on board with the ministry’s proposal, saying in a statement, “The ability to recruit alternate health care providers and train them to be critical care transport clinicians would help us achieve the staffing levels required to provide timely service to our most critically ill patients.”

Paramedics of all stripes are against the proposed changes, and say they will fight the government every step of the way.

“To pay a physician to do a paramedics job. I don’t believe that is the best use of our tax dollars,” says Cameron.

“This will create an additional strain on the health care system. I understand everyone is having these staffing pressures, but coming through the end of this pandemic, it is completely tone deaf to the needs of Ontario patients,” Wilton adds.

Some paramedics are proposing allowing paramedics to work in hospital emergency rooms to help keep rural and remote emergency rooms open, and not taking nurses and physicians out of emergency rooms to work in air ambulances.

In order for that plan to take shape, paramedics would have to be designated a regulated health care profession, which they currently are not.