Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
For doing my job
Nurse gets £5,500 in hospital car park penalties as she saves lives 690 calls for Ulster paramedics
disgusted. #hospitalparking” The Royal College of Emergency Medicine replied: “Outrageous. Hard-working NHS employees deserve better than this.”
CUH staff pay £10 for a permit, which they charge with a £2 scratchcard every day. But there is a limited number of staff bays, and Empark charges £15 a day to use nearby public parking spaces.
Vicky, who does three 12.5-hour shifts a week, said: “We regularly drive around for 45 minutes looking for a space, but because of the time I start my shift there are never any spaces. When there are spaces available they are public spaces and I can’t afford to pay £15 a day.
“When I’ve not been able to find a staff bay or a space on the roads outside the hospital, I’ve left a note on my scratchcard saying, ‘Really sorry, please do not fine me, call me on this number as there is nowhere to park’.
“Then I finish at 2am and see I’ve got a fine.” The fines start at £25 but quickly rise to £50 and then £100 if unpaid.
Vicky went on: “Where we are can be quite a dodgy area at night. I often have to park 15 minutes away in the street but we don’t feel safe, especially after the doctor was carjacked. We are frontline staff. I just feel it’s so unfair.”
Vicky, who lives a 30-minute drive away, cannot use public transport as she finishes work in the early hours. She said: “I’ve been in the resuscitation room with people very sick and I have to stay.
“I have had parents in whose children are very sick and they are worried about getting a ticket. It creates heightened anxiety on the ward because everyone wants to get back to their car.
“There is talk of the surrounding roads being made resident permits only, and if that happens people are talking about having to change jobs.”
Croydon Health Services NHS Trust said: “We are a busy hospital, and work hard to make sure our parking is fair. We offer concessions for patients, including those who require regular hospital visits, and designated areas for staff.
“Wardens will only ticket those cars that have stayed over their allotted time.
“If any patient or member of staff feels they have been ticketed unfairly, we offer the chance to appeal.” PARAMEDICS across Northern Ireland dealt with 690 calls on Thursday.
That’s a 16% jump in the number received on the same day last year.
And the vast majority of them were for people with immediately lifethreatening or very serious health concerns.
An Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We are working flat out.
“We are in the middle of a very busy period of time and we are still extremely busy.
“On January 4 we had 690 calls into the service and on the same day last year there was 596.”
Of those calls he said 212 were Category A, which means they were immediately life threatening.
And this figure was up 43.2% from just 148 of the most serious calls on the same day last year.
Category B calls accounted for a further 271 cases when an ambulance or rapid response paramedic was dispatched.
There were 146 Category C calls, which means they were not serious but some may have been made by doctors or other medical professionals.
NIAS puts the increase in calls down to a “year-onyear growth in demand”.
Their spokesman said: “What’s happening is reflective of what’s going on throughout the whole of the United Kingdom, not just Northern Ireland.”
Emergency Departments saw a 4% increase in the number of patients they treated over the Christmas period and a 14% increase compared to 2015/16.
A total of 15,626 patients were seen in Northern Ireland’s Type 1 Emergency Departments and 928 sick or injured people had to wait over 12 hours to be seen, treated and either discharged or admitted to hospital.
VICKY SLAYFORD ON PATIENTS’ TICKET FEARS