I just started working for a fairly rural EMS company. I also work for a larger ambulance company part time that has a very high call volume in the city, and also has several other sub stations that are rural that do 24 hour shifts. The larger company takes to heart the need for EMS workers to get rest and do everything possible to ensure that after 10 at night that they do not have to go out and sit point and lose sleep unless absolutely necessary. Of course they still are required to run e calls, but they rotate transfers between stations so one station isn't constantly getting hit. Some nights you may go with no sleep, but for the most part you can get a few at least.
Now I work for this rural company and they run maybe 400 e calls a year and survive solely on transfers. They have no organized dispatching and if one car has to go out on a call or transfer in the middle of the night, then everyone in the whole company (approx 6 stations) has to get up and move. One night I had to drive a 50 mile transfer on 1 hour sleep in the last 20 and was so tired I was seeing double. It scared me. Now they have started a new territory and the previous company had 2 cars in the city during the day and then went down to 1 at night. They did this successfully for over 3 years with no problems. Now that we have taken over, they have 2 on all the time and if one goes out on a transfer, then they are still moving the other cars from miles away so they still have 2 cars down there.
They are flat out running down their employees to the point of exhaustion and it's not safe for the worker, not the patient they are transporting. The president of the company has been told about our exhaustion, his answer, I pay you to work. I have told him that perhaps it would be safer to hire 12 hours transfer cars so that they can rotate, but it falls on deaf ears.
One night they even woke me up and had me drive an hour to go to a wheelchair call and then after I came back, I got sent on another one. They split up cars and shuffle things around so much, it's maddening.
My question is, is this normal at other places? it's one thing to be woke up for e calls, you get a certain amount of adrenaline going and it naturally wakes you up some, but this disorganized dispatching and misuse of resources it really becoming maddening. I cannot afford to quit, as I a family to take care of and am waiting for a full time spot to open at the larger one I have worked at for awhile.
One supervisor said they have had 3 accidents where employees have fallen asleep at the wheel, thank god they had no patient with them.
Any feedback you have would be appreciated.