Funding critical to retain St John

Station manager Trudy Taylor and Tim Wallace (left) once did 13 jobs in their truck in one day shift. Photo/Bevan Conley

Delivering a healthy baby is what keeps St John paramedic Trudy Taylor going.

"When we go to births it means that something's wrong," said Mrs Taylor.

"When you go to a delivery and you get a healthy mum and a healthy baby ... you live on those ones."

Intensive Care paramedic Jimmy Ceville said it leaves them on a high for a week.

Like every job, being a paramedic has its ups and downs, but Mr Ceville said there was a lot of positives in their work.

"We went to one, an 8-year-old girl who was choking," he said.

"She was unconscious, not breathing, and we fixed her up.

"We weren't too sure how it was going to go, it was a very difficult job."

The girl was flown to Starship hospital in Auckland and after several weeks in care she walked out with no mental deficit. "You save people's lives, which is a very positive feeling."

The average day shift (from 7am-6pm) at Wanganui St John will have somewhere between 10-15 callouts, though last week Mrs Taylor counted 23 jobs in one shift between the two .

"There's no rhyme or reason," said Mrs Taylor.

"Once upon a time we would have particular night shifts, you could even get a good sleep."

More callouts could be partly attributed to increased awareness of health conditions, and increasing elderly population, she said, though she guessed the the percentage to be around 60 per cent for elderly patients.

Callouts for younger people were more likely to be for mental health issues or car accidents.

As Murphy's Law demands, the day St John invited me on an ambulance ride-along was the same day everything went quiet.

On Tuesday morning I went with Mrs Taylor and fellow paramedic Tim Wallace to the house of an 89-year-old man who fell down in his bedroom at 9pm the night before, and had been lying on the floor the whole night.

Luckily a friend showed up in the morning to take him to hospital for an operation, otherwise he would have been alone on the floor until lunchtime - a bad situation made worse by the fact he was diabetic.

The rest of the day had only a handful of callouts, though on the upside this left more time for talking about the equipment and how to use it. St John holds its annual appeal this week, and a day out in the ambulance highlights how important funding is for them.

A medical callout costs $88, but in reality it costs several hundred for staff to simply go to that call, Mrs Taylor said.

Once staff wages, vehicle costs and equipment are taken into account, it begins to add up.

"Why give to us? To keep the ambulance service going," she said.

"We're not totally government funded."

Mrs Taylor said they needed new defibrillators at $21,000 each. Funding was also important to make sure each ambulance was double-crewed.

On the night shift there would always be one ambulance with only a single crew member, meaning if they need to care for the patient, they had to call for assistance so someone could drive the truck.

Bone drills, which aren't stocked in every vehicle, are about $750, and cannot be recharged once the battery is flat.

These are for injecting drugs straight into the bone marrow when a vein can't be found. One needle for the bone drill costs $175.

Our next callout was for a 75-year-old woman with a temperature, rash, and septicemia, an infection in the body, and as we return from that job I jump into the other ambulance which speeds out to Ratana, sirens blaring, for a 74-year-old woman who's taken a fall.

All the time while dealing with patients, the paramedics strike the perfect balance between brisk and and friendly.

"There wasn't a lot we could do but we still helped her and we helped her family," said Mrs Taylor.

"It's not only about the patient, it's helping the family as well."