Stop calling firefighters for help lifting ambulance patients: Steinbach council

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This article was published 26/06/2023 (726 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When paramedics need to move a patient but cannot do it on their own, they call the fire department.

But what used to be a rare call for help is becoming more common, to the point that Steinbach city council is asking the province to end the practice of lift assists all together. It is a move paramedics say is without a solution and could put them and their patients at risk.

Council unanimously passed a resolution pointing out that emergency medical services (EMS) are a provincial responsibility, and that the Association of Manitoba Municipalities should lobby the province to “end the practice of ‘lift-assist’ calls, which is downloading EMS responsibilities on to the municipal fire departments and transferring the costs of this health care service onto municipalities.”

Steinbach Fire Chief Kel Toews saw the numbers and said he and administration are still discussing what can be done with Southern Health.

“It’s not like they’re just saying that’s the way it is and that’s the way it will always be. We are working together, it’s just that we are a bit concerned that the numbers seem to be doubling every year. And if it keeps up, it won’t be sustainable,” said Toews.

By the end of May last year, firefighters were called out to lift-assists twice. This year, they have been called out 15 times so far. Lift-assists made up about 11 percent of incidents responded to by the fire department up to the end of May.

“It’s generally two to three a year, and at that we were willing to do them. It’s not a big burden on us to do a couple a year,” said Toews.

Coun. Michael Zwaagstra made the motion at the June 6 meeting.

“It creates a strain on our firefighters,” said Zwaagstra.

There are 12-15 firefighters on-call at any given time. All get paged when a lift assist is called in, disrupting sleep at 3 a.m. or forcing a few to drop everything at work to respond.

“It affects the employers as well, and we get a lot of support from the businesses in the city,” said Toews.

There is also the added cost of paying on-call responders.

Coun. Jac Hiebert seconded the motion.

“My understanding is that for lift assists we used to be the last call,” said Hiebert.

“Now we’re becoming the first call.”

Paramedic Association administrative director Rebecca Clifton, who also works as a paramedic in Selkirk, said that is not the case. But she also said the calls to firefighters in Manitoba for assistance is getting more common as paramedics get more desperate.

“They’re phenomenal, they’re great, we love them. But from the start of my career (13 years ago), we have relied on them on very rare occasions. And the desire is to use them as a last resort,” said Clifton.

“But given these staffing shortages, our next closest ambulance is potentially 45 minutes to an hour away. And even then, pulling that last ambulance that’s out there is potentially going to create a massive gap in coverage and a massive shift within the province. So we have relied more on the fire departments because it is sometimes time is of the essence, and it’s one of those critical incidents where we just need somebody and that’s all we really have sometimes.”

EMS calls for help when a patient is too heavy for the two paramedics on scene, or if there are obstacles like basement stairs, awkward doors, or other scenarios that require more hands. Sometimes police are there to help if a crime is involved or there is an overdose, but it is usually a pair or more of firefighters coming to their aid.

Clifton also said there are likely more calls because there is more self-awareness of health risks.

“It’s just not worth that risk of us hurting ourselves or us hurting the patient,” she said.

Clifton agreed with Toews that a solution is hard to find.

“If we don’t have that as a resource, I’m not sure what we would do. My concern is that there would be more back injuries. There would be people who would be like ‘well you know what, I’m just going to toughen up and do it,’ and we have worked really hard I would say over the last decade to kind of remove that mentality, that brawn of I’m going to move mountains into more of a safety-oriented mindset,” she said.

Clifton added if they moved backwards in safety, paramedics would be doing physio instead of their jobs and the staffing situation would just get worse.

“Unfortunately we can’t grow these paramedics in a garden,” said Clifton.

“We do need solutions because we’re not going to see improvements in these staffing levels for another five to 10 years.”

Toews said Southern Health is doing what it can.

“But to a certain extent, their hands are tied as well,” said Toews.

For firefighting duties, Toews said Steinbach has a solid contingent of 48 firefighters with plenty of applicants when they look for more every two or three years.

“Compared to some other smaller communities that work on a paid on-call or volunteer, we’re doing pretty well as far as recruitment goes,” said Toews.