"Ambulance experience"

My letter to SJA Albany WA

I felt an ambulance officer attending was rude, dismissive and should not attend vulnerable patients. My elderly parent had a BP of 212/118 was feeling frightened, anxious and really unwell at home, my relative was unable to carry them into the car so called the ambulance. As my parent was a little confused at the time, my relative was trying to let the ambos know what had happened and felt they were dismissed and the ambulance officer didn't want to know anything from my relative. When arriving at the hospital I recall the handover was conducted in a very loud voice so that it could be overheard them saying that there was nothing wrong with the patient and the ambulance was just being used as a taxi, obviously this was really distressing to hear.

I felt this person has no empathy, no compassion and I can't believe you employ what I believe to be such a horrible person, how do you think that made my parent feel? At a time when vulnerable people are unwell and hoping for care from health professionals they receive this response, based on my experience, how belittling, dismissive, bullying and disrespectful the 'help' was. I am sure my parent would never want to call an ambulance again having had this experience. Luckily my parents have worked in the health industry and know that this is not 'the norm' but I feel really sorry for all those without a level of health literacy and I believe would be left feeling threatened and bullied by this ambulance officer's behaviour.

As both my relative and I work in healthcare, I have had so much support from nurses and doctors (some that were on shift that night) to send through my complaint to yourselves, care opinion and the Minister, we are so happy that the staff actually looked after my parent as a patient and supported my relative as they were really worried as well and didn't just dismiss them as this ambulance officer seemingly did. I have heard from a number of people their experiences and I know most people don't follow up for fear of reprisal if they ever need the ambulance again.

I tried to phone SJA the next morning to speak with the regional manager and they passed a message on saying ‘there is a form online you can access’, what about all the elderly that I know who find it hard to navigate anything online, even the response from this level I feel is unacceptable.

I hope this may include some reflection from this person, so they don't continue this with other vulnerable people, however I am not hopeful.