Public fury as emergency workers display a sense of their own mortality
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It has become so boringly familiar. “Emergency services held back by red tape”, runs the typical headline in the press. Usually this refers to an incident in which the emergency services have been halted in their duties by serious concerns about their own safety. This, in turn, will upset a great many people, who appear to believe that firefighters and ambulance staff should behave more like the ones they see in action movies. Indeed, on the silver screen such heroes will invariably hurtle in with no regard for their own wellbeing – shielded only by the knowledge that, as fictional characters, they won’t actually be leaving a family behind to suffer the impact of their demise.
The latest incident to provoke the ire of the press is a rather sad one. A woman named Caren Patterson was left brain damaged after paramedics took 2 hours to come to her aid. Her address had been “red-flagged” as “high risk” for paramedics, and as such they demanded a police escort. This in turn took a great deal of time to arrive, leaving the ambulance crew waiting as Patterson’s brain was starved of Oxygen.
There certainly appear to be questions about whether the address was “red flagged” by mistake, and the ambulance service have admitted liability. But the basic principle, that paramedics should have a right to require police back up when enterring known high risk addresses, is sound. Every year there are around 3,000 attacks on paramedics. They are not armed with batons, or trained in public order – and if they are to be made into quasi-police officers, this too could compromise their ability to do their job.
The Mail recently reported on the apparently scandalous decision of ambulance staff to hold back while Raul Moat was on his rampage, and offered us a list of other “Victims of risk avoiders”. Amongst them was Phil Surridge, who died after fire crews refused to rescue him from a frozen lake, on account of the fact tat they weren’t trained to do so. They quote his mother’s assertion that fire crews had “condemned him to death”.
Now, perhaps I am missing something here, but running onto a frozen lake, in which one person is already drowning, strikes me as a uniquely dangerous activity for which one would need specialist training. It also occurs to me that just because somebody is trained to rescue people from burning buildings, it doesn’t mean they know how to how to deal with frozen lakes. Perhaps there was some bad bureaucracy in sending a crew with the wrong training, but cowardice is neither here nor there.
Since serfdom came to an end, the basic idea has been that workers sell their labour power but not themselves.While some jobs inevitably involve risk, it is ridiculous to expect the workers who keep our emergency services going to behave like they are completely dispensable. When the grand age of robots dawns, we can perhaps disregard such considerations. But until then our emergency services will need to be staffed by human beings.
To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net
Reader Comments
Well said.
Great article, and a refreshing counterweight to the half-witted ‘moral outrage’ from newspapers that wouldn’t recognise a moral if it came and smacked them on the nose.
if you join a job where you know you likely to be attacked, and are to scared to endanger yourself your in the wrong job. lots of people want to be paramedics and firemen so they could recruit people who were willing to to have a fight or to endanger themselves . as the years pass this country gets more cowardly
There’s something akin to a category error in the idea of red flagging addresses and I deeply dislike the practice.
Paramedics accept that every time they enter a property they are entering the unknown – there will always be a risk. At what point is the risk sufficient that a property should be red flagged?
On some occasions – clearly they’re should be red-flagging. In the case of Raoul Moat and Derrick Bird – obviously violent criminal activity had just occurred and it was reasonable they wait – but to have property continuously red flagged – (with the exception of an actual prison) – seems to me wrong. If the inhabitants have not been charged with anything / don’t have outstanding warrants for an arrest / and are not suspected of a recent [violent] crime – they should not be under suspicion – and they should certainly not be denied adequate medical care which as taxpayers they have to right expect.
Red-flagging is discriminatory, it undermines the idea of a universal health service and I can’t see how it won’t affect the poorest, living in areas of higher crime, disproportionately.
No paramedic wants to be attacked , but equally I doubt any paramedic will be happy knowing that they might have saved a life but for red tape.(I may be wrong but newspaper reports all give the same impressions that the decision is taken out of the hands of the paramedics on the ground. As such it must surely undermine public confidence in paramedics – who by extension are ‘not trusted’ to make decision according to their own judgement. And as Johnathan inadvertently points out a large part of public respect for paramedics is tied into the perception of them as ‘brave’ – undercut their status and you may see more rather than less violence in the future).
To blame the individuals in this case is wrong – to attack the policy is I think justified.