Cut-price medics sent to 999 calls

CREWS’ EIGHT WEEKS’ TRAINING

AMBULANCE crews with only a few weeks’ training are being sent on 999 calls.

Seven in 10 services routinely send two care assistants to incidents without a qualified paramedic.

Care assistants, also known as ECAs, were sent on 47,000 jobs across the country last year, dealing with heart attacks, strokes and cardiac arrests.

The shocking figures could be even higher, with three organisations not providing their own statistics.

Last week Mark Clements caught a bus, two Tubes and two trains to travel 180 miles from London to Devon and still arrived before the emergency services reached his mum.

An ambulance arrived an hour later for Margaret, 77, who had broken her hip – leaving her waiting for seven hours. Bosses at South Western Ambulance Service Foundation Trust claimed they decided to focus on the more life-threatening and serious cases over Margaret’s.

Dr John Lister, of London Health Emergency dismissed ECAs as a “cheap way of staffing the ambulance service”.

He said: “If I needed treatment I would like to be cared for by a paramedic rather than someone who has done an eightweek course.” But Martin Flaherty, of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, insisted ECAs were “vital” .

He explained: “They will only be sent when they are likely to get there faster than a paramedic to start the life-saving process until a paramedic is able to get to the scene.”