AMBULANCE staff feel “deeply conflicted” about taking strike action according to Welsh Ambulance Service chief executive Jason Killens.
He told GB News: “We’ve got the first day of action by Unite the union today and a further day on Monday, that follows two days of industrial action in the last couple of weeks by GMB here in Wales and obviously, across the rest of the ambulance sector in the UK.
“The staff I’ve been talking to in the last few weeks are saying to me that they joined the ambulance service like I did to help people to provide great care to patients when they need us most.
“And in the choices that our staff are making, our people are making, they feel deeply conflicted, because on the one hand, they joined to provide that great care to patients, when they need it most. But on the other, they feel that they can’t currently do that, because of the pressure across health and social care.
“They feel that the time is now ripe for them to make their stand their point with their unions about the pressure and the working conditions which they are currently enduring.”
He added: “The dispute arises out of one of pay, which is with government, not with me or with us as the employer.
“These workplace issues are very much in the minds of our clinicians and our control room staff in the choices they’re making.”
In an interview with Bev Turner, he said: “There’s no doubt in the staff that I’ve been talking to in the last few weeks that many of them feel now that the pressure is such that they can’t do the job that they joined for, they can’t provide the great care that they want to offer to patients.
“When they call us when they need us most often, our paramedics and emergency medical technicians were seeing one or two patients in a 12 hour shift and now it is six, eight or ten patients a shift.
“They’re concerned about the impact on patients and patient safety. And of course, we do know that some patients sadly, are coming to avoidable harm as a result of the delays that are occurring.
He added: “It’s a complex picture, delays at the emergency department happen, which hold our crews there and prevent us from responding and those delays happen because of flow through the hospital not being as efficient as it should be.
“That’s because there are many patients in beds that are medically fit for discharge that could be in communities, but can’t be because of pressure in adult social care, so this is a kind of multi-sector issue.
“But our ambulance staff, certainly our ambulance workers, paramedics, call centre staff and others do feel very strongly now that they think they need to make the point to government and others that the pressure is such their working conditions are such that they feel they need to take strike action.”
