‘We are seeing about 750 to 1000 vacancies’; On-call paramedic structure hindering recruitment

“This is an elderly town … and it’s just too hard to get to Kamloops. So it’s nice to have the service here,” added another, Crystal.

The president of the union representing paramedics stated that paramedics that would usually be in Barriere were reportedly assisting in Kamloops. Due to staffing challenges, upwards of 50 per cent of ambulances in B.C. can go unstaffed on any given night.

“Across the province we are seeing about 750 to 1000 vacancies – regular, part-time and full-time – in every corner of the province. That is right from rural communities to urban and metro communities. That’s a significant gap,” said Clifford.

Clifford says the work being done is focused on retention and recruitment for new staff, but the biggest hurdle is the on-call structure.

“We aren’t competitive from the wages and benefits perspective and that’s a reality we’ve faced for a while,” he said.

“But it’s really been exposed when you are seeing the human resources challenges across every industry and profession. We are about 30 per cent behind our partners in police and fire and public safety,” added Clifford.

Currently, an on-call paramedic makes just $2 per hour, as they wait for a call to come in.

“When you can’t recruit people in the community because of that $2, that lack of wages and benefits — that model of service delivery just doesn’t work anymore, and very few people are choosing to do that because they can’t afford to,” said Clifford.

“That is hurting our ability to staff ambulances in rural and remote,” said Clifford.

On top of the staff shortages, the call volume across B.C. has also been increasing by 6 per cent per year.

Thankfully, Clifford believes the work being done is moving the needle forward in addressing the problem province wide.

“I believe there is hope on the horizon and if we can get through these really tough times, dire times we are in right now. We will be able to get there,” said Clifford.

“We are going to need an influx of immediate funding to make sure we can deal with the upstaffing of the precarious models we talked about,” added Clifford.

Interior Health has confirmed that the Emergency Department at the Barriere and District Health Centre will be closed until at least Thursday (Sept. 1), adding more pressure to the already understaffed paramedics in the region.

by Michael Reeve

‘We are seeing about 750 to 1000 vacancies’; On-call paramedic structure hindering recruitment

Our Community