Damages a big hangup
TAXPAYERS were billed more than $1.5 million to replace mobile phones and tablets lost or damaged by careless public servants last year.
Defence personnel were the worst offenders, which raises further questions about communications security.
Defence was also required to fix 1031 phones and tablets that staff had damaged – almost half the total 2090 work phones and tablets damaged by public servants in 2016.
It cost an extra $255,826 to replace 340 lost or stolen devices, adding to the total bill of $34 million to supply public servants with phones and tablets over the year. AMANDA ROBBEMOND EVERY night, triple-0 operators on the Gold Coast receive around 600 calls for help.
They are the hidden white knights, answering emergency calls from desperate fathers trying to help their pregnant wives roadside to the most gruesome crimes.
As reporter Amanda Robbemond found out, being a triple-0 operator is no ordinary desk job.
She visited the Southport Operations Centre on a busy Friday night, expecting a bustling call centre and a simple brief of answering calls and sending out ambulances. The reality was quite different.
A QUIET FRIDAY NIGHT
The Southport Operations Centre is surprisingly quiet and shadowy.
It is about twice the size of a classroom, filled with at least nine emergency medical dispatchers (EMDs) tapping away at keyboards.
Each operator is hooked to a headset and monitor up to five screens in front of them, each with a number of programs open.
Experienced EMD Jason Jones will be showing me the ropes tonight.
He says he’s been working in the field for four years.
“I don’t think the guys get enough credit for how fast we have to work sometimes, under pressure,” he says, showing me to his desk.
“Some calls are draining ... but you get a lot of positive satisfaction.”
He points to a thin white pole with two LED beacons at each EMD desk.
The yellow light on top glows when the operator is on the phone so anyone walking by knows not to disturb them.
The blue light underneath is a “trigger” light.
When it’s on, an operator needs a mental “time out”. It might be for a minute – until the phone goes again – or longer.
By 6pm the call centre has already received 384 emergency calls in the day. Within four hours, that will balloon to nearly 500.
Operation Centre Supervisor Tanya Linnett says it’s just another Friday night.
And no, the figures aren’t anything out of the ordinary, she says.
Unsurprisingly, Fridays and Saturdays tend to be the busiest days of the week for EMD as they work around the clock to send out 30-50 ambulances to jobs across the Coast.
Mr Jones says he expects calls from people at sports matches on a Friday night.
He’s not wrong.
LISTENING IN
About 40 minutes in, I’m ready to strap on the headphones and listen to an emergency call.
The sports call pops quickly.
“Ambulance, what’s the town or suburb of the emergency?” Mr Jones asks, before confirming the address and the phone number.
A teenager has suffered a spinal injury.
The person on the other line sounds upset but not hysterical – thankfully.
Mr Jones goes through the questions until he finds out the information he needs to code the job correctly.
What’s happened? How old is he? Is he awake? Is he breathing? Has he suffered any serious bleeding? Is he fully alert? Any other injuries?
I’m amazed at how quickly the information is put into the system.
Mr Jones types quickly, switching between two screens, answering the caller in a calm, collected manner.
Within two minutes the incident is coded and Mr Jones reassures the caller an ambulance is on its way. He tells them to call back if the patient deteriorates.
Sometimes the triple-0 operator will stay on the line.
MORE THAN A CALL CENTRE
up There’s a lot more to the job than sitting at a desk, Mr Jones explains, pulling out the EMD “bible”, the Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS).
It’s a heavy flip-book detailing the 33 protocols operators need to choose each time there is a call.
“We have a triage system with our questioning,” Mr Jones says. “As an (EMD) before you even come into this room, you learn this book.”
Nowadays the hard copy MPDS is just there for reference, as the protocols show up on computer screens.
But the questions an EMD must ask remain the same.
THE PROCESS
When you call triple-0, a Telstra operator will divert you to either police, firefighters or ambulance.
Once you’ve chosen ambulance, an EMD will pick up within 10 seconds.
They always ask the most important question first: “What’s the town or suburb of your emergency?”
Mr Jones says sometimes every EMD will be on the phone in a particular dispatch centre, which means the call is re-routed to a different centre with open lines.
“You’ll get a call from Brisbane or a Gold Coast call will go to Cairns.
“We all have to be able to deal with (it), it doesn’t matter where the patient is. First and foremost we have to find the address. The Gold Coast especially, they’re tourists, they come on holiday and they don’t know where they are.”
One trick to get an address is to direct the caller back of their hotel room door where the hotel address is listed.
Mr Jones says from the moment he answers a call, he is judging the situation.
“You can’t change what’s coming,” he says.
“One of my mentors said ‘Always be prepared for the call to be the worst’, so that if it’s any better, life’s a breeze, but if you’ve prepared for the worst, you’re ready to go when they ring up and say, ‘my child’s not breathing’.”
Once the address is established and double checked, the number they are calling from is also doubled checked.
Then they delve into what actually happened with the help of the MPDS.
“Based on the initial assessment that the caller tells me on the phone ... I have to follow this strict series of questioning because I’m not a doctor,” Mr Jones says.
“I don’t know what (para-