Northern Territory Ambulance Service Under Extreme Pressure Amidst Rising Demand and Violence
The Northern Territory’s ambulance service is grappling with unprecedented strain, facing a critical shortage of resources that is leading to extended wait times for urgent medical assistance. Alice Crooman, the territory deployment manager for St John Ambulance NT in Darwin, described a recent Wednesday evening where a backlog of incidents stretched across her computer screen. With a limited fleet of ambulances, the response times for each escalating situation were a constant source of concern.
“Tonight is one of those times where we are under-resourced from an ambulance perspective,” Ms Crooman explained. “That results in community members having to wait longer for the ambulance to arrive because there’s less ambulances that can attend.” This scenario is becoming increasingly common. In fact, the service recently declared its first “operational capacity white” in its 50-year history in the NT, a designation indicating that numerous calls had to be abandoned due to a lack of available resources.
St John’s own data paints a stark picture: the number of calls handled by NT paramedics has doubled in the last decade, surging from under 50,000 to more than 100,000 annually. Ms Crooman, with 23 years of experience in paramedicine, noted that the number of ambulances operating in the Territory has only increased by a mere two over her tenure. The relentless workload is taking a significant toll on the staff.
“It takes a huge psychological toll as well as a physical toll on the crews,” she stated. “When you’ve had an exceptionally busy 12-hour shift — give or take occupational violence — you begin to question whether you want to come in the following day or whether you’ve even got the capacity, mentally and physically, to turn up.” A recent observation by the ABC provided a firsthand glimpse into the immense pressure faced by these frontline emergency workers.
Surge in Assaults Exacerbates Burnout and Attrition
Adding to the crisis, St John NT’s director of ambulance services, Craig Garraway, revealed that there have been 169 incidents of occupational violence against paramedics in the past year alone. This alarming statistic significantly contributes to the already high rates of burnout and attrition within the service.
“It’s definitely the worst I’ve seen,” Mr Garraway commented. “I’ve been doing this for 35 years now and in the last probably five to seven years, I really feel it’s changed.”
For Warren Purse, a Territory paramedic with over two decades of experience, this translates to being assaulted on the job approximately three to four times each year. He recounted a harrowing incident where he was attending to a patient experiencing chest pain. The patient unexpectedly became violent, and Mr Purse found himself with the man’s hands around his throat. “He had his hands around my throat, I thought I was going to die,” he recalled. “If the other paramedic hadn’t crashed-tackled him, I probably wouldn’t be around.”
These traumatic experiences have fundamentally altered Mr Purse’s approach to his work. “In certain areas where I’ve been assaulted, I’ll be hyper vigilant,” he admitted. “If I’m not required as much, you’ll usually find me hovering around helping with equipment or just watching over the whole situation.”
Escalating Response Times and Systemic Strain
Data from the Productivity Commission indicates a steady rise in ambulance response times across the NT over the past decade, with a dramatic acceleration in the last 12 months. In Darwin, the median wait time for an ambulance increased by five minutes in the past year, pushing the average waiting period to 18 minutes in the Territory’s capital. Nationally, the NT recorded the longest median response times at over 16 minutes.
Mr Garraway attributed these extended delays to a combination of factors: insufficient resourcing, the vast distances paramedics must travel between incidents, and lengthy queues of ambulances waiting to transfer patients at hospitals. “We just don’t have the resources to keep up with the workload,” he stated. “The health system Australia-wide and worldwide is under strain.”
The increased pressure on the ambulance service is also a contributing factor to aggression from the public, Mr Garraway noted. “People want help straight away and we can’t get help to them straight away,” he said. “We don’t have the resources to just be there when you want us to be there.”
Compounding these challenges, the persistent issue of assaults, both physical and verbal, is driving St John NT’s attrition rate, which is already the highest in the country.
“What happens now is [paramedics] think about whether they’re going to come to work for the next night shift because they had such a hard shift the day before,” Mr Garraway explained.
For dedicated paramedics like Mr Purse, the current situation is deeply disheartening for his colleagues who are committed to serving the community. “It’s really disheartening — these guys are committed to the job, they’re passionate about their job, they’re passionate about helping people,” he said. “We don’t come to work to be assaulted.”
[Graph: Demand for NT ambulance services]
[Graph: Ambulance change in wait times]
[Attrition graph]
