THE St John Ambulance service has been experiencing extremely high demand for ambulance services across the country, but in Tairawhiti they have been coping well despite a slight increase in demand.
Incident numbers nationally for St John now exceed those seen during the Omicron surge.
“While high demand during winter is not unusual, this sustained increase in workload has come six weeks earlier than predicted,” said St John deputy chief executive ambulance operations Dan Ohs.
“In the last three weeks across New Zealand we received 1588 more calls a week. That’s a 13 percent increase, and 459 more ambulance responses a week (a 6 percent increase) than expected for this time of year.
“This is combined with an increase in winter illness, with 100 staff on average being off work each day, which is compounded by 130 vacancies nationally,” Mr Ohs said.
St John Tairawhiti operations manager Shane Clapperton said they have been experiencing only slightly more calls than usual for this time of year.
The calls had been mainly to people suffering from respiratory illnesses, “but as I say, only slightly more than usual”.
“Staffing-wise we have been coping OK.
“We are looking for extra staff for Ruatoria and we have a job vacancy in Gisborne that we are working hard to fill,” Mr Clapperton said.
“Illness-wise with staff we are OK, but that can change at any time.”
The increase in demand nationally has been affecting both the 111 communications centres and St John’s ability to respond with emergency ambulances, Mr Ohs said.
“Callers to our 111 communications centres may experience a delay before their call is answered, and we may not be able to send an ambulance immediately where a problem is non-life threatening.
“For this reason, we are asking the public to call their GP or Healthline for non-life-threatening problems, and to reserve ambulances for life or limb-threatening emergencies.”
Mr Ohs said where people do request an ambulance for a non-life-threatening problem, they can expect a call back from a registered nurse or paramedic, who will attempt to provide them the same care and advice that would otherwise be afforded to them if an ambulance crew were to attend the scene.
Auckland and Dunedin have been experiencing the highest demand for services.