Once people in these communities actually start to care about their paramedics things might change. Things are so broken with the BCAS right now you’d be suprised at what happens even in big cities like PG. The medics are basically being treated like second class citizens from their own employer.

Stewart has a population of 494 people. So when you factor in those who could not be volunteers, you come up with a very small number of people.

This is a problem without a doubt, however not sure what the solution is. Perhaps with all the mining and construction going on in the area there should be an effort for the Government, First Nations, BC Hydro, and Business to set up a service in a central point for the whole area.

Stewart will at some point become the port for exporting all the concentrate from the various mines.

None of the BCAS paramedics are “volunteers” (which suggests that they are doing it for free). They are all employees by the BC Ambulance Service. Nearly all BC Paramedics outside of the Vancouver region are part-time employees. That means that a great many of them need second jobs to pay the bills. In rural settings, many get jobs in Alberta where industry is desperate for medics. But if you ask what they would really love to do, most would say work for the Ambulance Service, if it were financially practical.

Many Northern Communities are a lot like Stewart. $2 an hour pager pay isn’t enough to attract people to the service, especially since when you are on-call you have to be ready to drop what you are doing and go do a job that can be incredibly stressful and dangerous. We pay the RCMP members in rural communities the same salary as the ones in the lower mainland, but the government expects paramedics to work on-call for $2 an hour.

Honestly, more Paramedics need to quit in places like Stewart before the Government will act. Paramedics can’t strike effectively to improve their employment conditions, and the strike they did have (where they never stopped doing their job), they were legislated into a contract in time to not embarrass the BC Liberals during the Olympics.

So what is a solution? Rural comminities have what is called a Kilo-shift. That is the one where the paramedics are paid $2 an hour pager pay to go about their lives (sort of) until they get paged, then their full wages go into effect for at least 4 hours. You can’t recruit employees like that.

There is another type of shift called a foxtrot-shift. These paramedics are paid something like $10 an hour to be at the station, in uniform, and ready to respond to a call in under two-minutes. They then get their full wages for at least 3-hours. I think that this shift, as a minimum for all stations, would be easier to recruit to. At least you have some guarantee of an income. It would also cut response times in rural communities.

Covering a large and diverse province like ours isn’t easy. BC has the potential to have a world class Ambulance Service. We already have most of the things we need (dedicated Infant Transport Unit, Critical Care Transport, etc). But we have to be willing to offer enough pay, especially to the rural paramedics, that we can attract and keep the most vital part of that system.

Mercenary@How exactly are the paramedics treated badly?

I logged all up and down the coast and worked mostly in fly-in camps with a married quarters, and often these camps had in excess of 400 people. On the open coast, you could get socked in with bad weather for days at a time so that no ‘planes came in or out.
However, all camps had at least one full-time 1st Aid person with an A-Ticket, if a not a double A (these were the designations back then; probably different now, but it denotes the top level of training just below a paramedic). Maybe this is the solution for some of these small, isolated communities. Another possible component might be keeping a Nurse Practitioner on-duty as more of these professionals are being trained all the time. Then, at least, there is someone on all the time who can perform high level medical care while an ambulance is on its way.

bill: I’d like to go into it with you but these walls have ears….if you catch my drift. Lets just say that if you worked for them….you’d likely be ticked right off with what is happening….

billposer wrote: “How exactly are the paramedics treated badly.”

Hmm … I read PGCoffeeAddict’s post. I would say that it covers how they are treated badly.

It is obviously a labour of love for those who can afford it financially.

I remember Dave Wilbur. When he was running in the last election he told an audience that if we bring more people to Prince George we could lower taxes. I was there. He’s a cool dude.

“BC has the potential to have a world class Ambulance Service”

BC is not much different than most of the provinces up to and including Quebec as well as Newfoundland-Labrador and parts of New Brunswick even.

So, are any of them world class when it comes to remote emergency medical services? Who, in fact, is world class? Brazil? South Africa? Russia? How about Mongolia?

Pester Shirley Bond to get a Northern Health bus to visit frequently.

There’s something weird with the way posts are posted. When I asked the question that is stamped 20 minutes after PGCoffeeAddict’s post, his post was not visible to me.

during the time a poster takes composing their post (not likely an issue in bill’s case) or scrolling through reading the long set of previous posts while already logged in or flipping to other open windows for a moment or research (i.e. Gus), there are no new “refreshes” sent to your your computer … hitting the froward page and back page along with the refresh button does cause new posts to be shown as they come in …