KEY POINTS:
Ambulances are being driven to hospitals in "desperate situations" by friends and families of patients, as resourcing problems hit the country's emergency services.
The Herald on Sunday has uncovered incidents in which sole-charge officers have been sent to 111 call-outs and then have had to enlist civilians to drive the ambulance to the hospital while they treat the patients in the back.
St John has conceded that civilians have been used on "extremely rare" occasions, and said that in times of crisis, it usually called on police or fire officers to drive ambulances.
However, in one recent incident in the Bay of Plenty, a friend of a female patient had to get behind the wheel and take her to hospital while she was being attended to by the paramedic.
The practice was also confirmed by long-serving ambulance officer Adrienne Andresen, who is also the union spokeswoman for Wairoa Ambulance Services.
She said that on two occasions she had asked a relative of the patient to drive while she attended to the person. "I just looked around at who I had, and went. I said 'Your top speed is 80!' - give them a figure and they'll stick to it, I reckon.
"I kept an eye on them and an eye on the patient from the back. They were only too glad to help, really."
She claimed that 62 per cent of call-outs were attended by a single crew member due to a lack of paid staff and volunteers in the area. Other people were asked to drive the ambulance in "desperate situations", but there had been many occasions when she had to ask a volunteer fireman to drive the ambulance.
Opposition health spokesman Tony Ryall last night said the sole-charge ambulance scheme would be a "disappointment" to rural areas.
Rural communities especially were dissatisfied with single-crewed ambulances, and a lack of volunteers was a large part of the problem.
Federation of Ambulance Officer Unions' secretary Karl Anderson said the practice was unsafe and unacceptable and single-crewed ambulances put paramedics and the public at risk.
Up to 15 per cent of St John's annual 207,482 emergency call-outs have sole drivers who also have to take care of injured or sick patients.
And that has led to a number of complaints and problems including:
The case of a quadriplegic Wanganui man who choked and turned blue last March when a single-crewed ambulance was unable to manage him, and would have died if a second ambulance had not arrived.
An Auckland man who died from a bee sting, and claims by the coroner that St John sending a single-crewed vehicle was unacceptable.
A relative of a sick baby who had stopped breathing having to drive the ambulance to hospital in 2005 because the sole paramedic was busy looking after the 10-week-old infant.
A man dying in a car and motorcycle accident in 2003 after a single-crewed ambulance was unable to take the badly injured man to hospital, as no one could monitor him.
A front-seat passenger with head injuries and dying from cardiac arrest after a single ambulance officer called for back-up.
St John chief operations officer Keven Tate confirmed that ambulance officers sometimes called on people at the emergency scene to drive the vehicle to hospital.
When possible, he said, the patient would be treated or stabilised by the ambulance officer, then transported. Only in rare cases did an ambulance need someone to drive the vehicle back to hospital.
The ambulance would never be driven at high speed with the emergency lights and sirens flashing. "In all cases, they would drive at normal road speed. The safety of the patient and the public is paramount," said Tate.
Health Minister Pete Hodgson was unavailable for comment last night. Last year in Parliament he said funding for ambulance services had increased 17 per cent since 2002, and it was up to the provider to decide how funds were distributed.
- HERALD ON SUNDAY
