I’m guessing a lot of you will already have read Reynolds’ post about the news that ambulance crews are now allowed (shock, horror) official tea breaks — half-an-hour in a twelve hour shift, unpaid — and the fact that The Sun apparently thinks this is “barmy”. Here are my views from the Control side of the fence — I would be interested to hear the views of any LAS crews reading this.
Before the new rules came in, it wasn’t that ambulance crews didn’t get any breaks at all, but they certainly didn’t get the kind of breaks most people would find acceptable. Crews on q***ter stations would be able to return to station between calls, and crews on busier stations would take a few minutes out at hospital after each call, listening to their radio to see if Control are holding any serious calls in their area. In both cases, crews would find their breaks frequently interrupted, with Sod’s Law dictating that if any of them were to attempt to eat any hot food or light a cigarette, a call would come in straight away. At q***ter times, we would ring stations to officially put crews “on break” but these breaks could be interrupted for any call. If crews got no break, or an interrupted break, they got a small payment (about £5, I think?) to compensate them. It seemed to me that everyone was content with this system.
The new system dictates that each crew must have a break in a certain time slot. The first twenty-minutes are uninterruptible whilst the last ten can only be interrupted for a Suspended. (Incidentally, what is this “code red” business the press keep going on about? I heard it first during the Kayleigh Christie case, and now again with meal breaks. It’s not a term we actually use…) I haven’t worked a shift on Dispatch since this rule came in, but I hear the rumblings coming down the stairs, and it seems no-one is happy. In particular, there seems to be a record level of antagonism between crews and control staff. I am not even sure what they are arguing about; it just seems to be a source of constant conflict, with confused controllers trying to interrupt uninterruptible breaks, crews not wanting to go on break, crews wanting to go on break, crews saying they are still on break when control think they are not on break, crews being on break when we are holding fifteen Cat A calls, etc, etc, etc. It has got so bad that people are actually getting to work and asking to be on Call Taking, because they are more likely to get into a slanging match with a crew than with an arsey caller.
From the Call Taking perspective, all I keep noticing is that whenever I get a really serious call, there’s always a FRU a few metres away… on its sodding break!!!
In summary, crews are entitled to their breaks, and I think it is completely ridiculous for the Sun, Control or anyone else to complain about them being given them. We all get our half hour lunch break without interruption and I am sure the Sun journalists get a lot longer than that. On the other hand, I’d like to see the system become a bit more flexible and somehow be revised in a way that stops all the aggro. In most professions, one gets one’s uninterrupted lunch break most of the time, but when things at work get hectic or there is some kind of emergency, lunch is sometimes postponed or cut short, and it does seem a bit ridiculous that if someone drops dead outside the ambulance station, we can’t even ask the crew on break inside if they could put their sandwiches down to go and help.
Hopefully this is all just teething problems, and in a few months everyone will be all smiles again.