Right now, outside hospital emergency departments across the state, flocks of ambulances sit empty, an unnaturally occurring phenomenon known as “ramping”. Their operators, highly skilled paramedics, mill around minding their patients in cramped and chaotic corridors while hospital staff scramble to clear beds.
More and more people are wandering into emergency departments for minor ailments because they can’t access a GP, but they can hardly be blamed. The failing health system leads people to take desperate measures. And yet the premier, Dominic Perrottet, has denied there is ramping issue in NSW and refused to budge on the wage cap for paramedics like myself; an effective pay cut bestowed upon us by his government while we were busy battling the pandemic.
