Ambulance staff want to skip newly introduced breaks - became late to a patient with cardiac arrest

According to a deviation report for the Ambulance Health Service in Västerbotten from August, an alarm about cardiac arrest was received by SOS.

The only ambulance nearby was on a break with the communication radio turned off.

Instead, SOS calls the ambulance station and the staff interrupts their break and goes on the alert, but important time has been lost, something the newspaper Norran was the first to tell.

Patient died

According to the deviation report, this leads to the patient receiving delayed care and significantly worse conditions for surviving the cardiac arrest.

Upon arrival, cardiopulmonary resuscitation is started, but the patient's life cannot be saved.

The rapporteur is critical of the breaks introduced and believes that it is inappropriate to use breaks as it is impossible to predict acute events, such as cardiac arrest.

Union critical

Previously, the staff had a meal supplement instead of a scheduled break, so that the staff would always be available.

But today, each ambulance has a 30-minute break, which has resulted in many deviation reports since then.

- You remove an ambulance for 30 minutes every time an ambulance has a break.

Then you can calculate for yourself that it will not get better for the patients, says David Simonsson, safety representative for the ambulance.

In the clip above, you hear David Simonsson about what needs to be changed for more ambulances to be available.