We continue seeking improvements on hospital offload delays because we totally disagree that ramping is a ‘normal ambulance activity’ and believe we all should object to attempts to normalise it.
Our key advice when ramped is:
- You are not required to take your patient to different parts of the hospital. In-hospital care, treatments, explorations, and interventions should be done by hospital staff, preferably after a patient handover.
- You are not responsible for cleaning the hospital environment, this is a role for hospital staff.
- You are not required to push hospital beds to or from the ED or to other ramping locations.
- You should not allow care, interventions and treatments outside your scope or clinical knowledge.
- You do not have to accept more than one patient when ramped. This is a decision for you to make and bullying about saying no should not be tolerated.
- You are not responsible for the collection, removal or transfer of rubbish or linen bags when in the hospital setting.
- Interns and people undertaking TASO or RTW should not accept unsupervised practice if supervised practice is needed, including looking after ramped patients.
- You should clean surfaces that your patients or their support people touch.
- You are entitled to meal and hydration breaks even when ramped.
- You need to negotiate with your Operations Supervisor (DM), not hospital staff, if you need assistance when ramped, except for time-critical safety or critical clinical issues.
- If you have any concerns about safety, clinical events or operational issues please submit an SRLS.
