By Dominic Abassi

Number of Nanaimo paramedics to double thanks to funding

Jan 25, 2018 | 3:43 PM

NANAIMO — There will soon be twice as many full-time paramedics ready to respond to emergencies in Nanaimo.

BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) on Thursday announced 24 full-time paramedics will be hired in Nanaimo, as well as three new ambulances added to the local fleet.

“That should make quite a difference in response times,” Linda Lupini, executive vice president of BCEHS, told NanaimoNewsNOW.

Lupini said Nanaimo previously had 24 full-time paramedics, with the bulk of shifts filled by on-call and casual staff who often had other jobs. She said having full-time dedicated staff working every day will “stabilize the workforce.”

BCEHS studied what kinds of calls are coming in and when. Lupini said that data, combined with more staff, allows them to align shifts with peak call volumes moving forward.

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“Prior to this we might have some staff on shifts where they weren’t very busy, then other staff would come on to a shift and work straight through with overtime because it was a peak time for calls. We can now align shifts,” she said.

Lupini said they witnessed increasing call volumes in all communities in B.C. in recent years. In Nanaimo, she said nearly one-quarter of the roughly 16,000 calls BCEHS responded to last year were considered life-or-death situations where response time was critical.

Nanaimo is also a community seeing a heavy impact from the overdose crisis, she said.

“It does put a significant degree of stress on individual paramedics and the system but this deployment planning is something we would be doing anyway.”

The Nanaimo area was one of the first to be reviewed as part of the BCEHS action plan. The review found the mid-island had relatively high call volumes and a low number of full-time staff.

Parksville, Ladysmith and Qualicum Beach will also see two new paramedics each as part of Thursday’s announcement.

dom@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @domabassi