Fatigue - Rebecca

"I’ve had times where I’ve had to pull the ambulance over I’ve been so fatigued and nauseated that both my partner I actually vomited, because we’ve been working all night.

"I’ve also been driving my patient and partner to hospital and forgotten completely where I was going, and made wrong turns. And these are places that I would normally know very well.”

"It makes it quite difficult to continue with patient care, because sometimes you forget what you've done, what you’ve said, what they’ve said.

"And the more you do that, the more you worry about making a mistake that might be detrimental to patient care. So it becomes quite a stressful situation to be in.”

"It got to the point where I drove through a red light with my student in the car and I didn’t realise it, that was at night after doing a very long shift.

"Had some truck been coming though the green light, I could have killed us both. It was a very sobering moment.

"For me, the effects of the sleep deprivation accumulated over a period of 2-3 years.

"I was getting less and less sleep between night shifts, then normal shifts, then it progressed to not getting very good sleep even on my days off.

"I then progressed to having serious health problems, which I then ended up being hospitalised for, for a couple of those medical problems.

"Fatigue is a serious issue. People’s lives are at stake, not only patients but the staff. I think if nothing is done, there may well be an accident where people are killed, as a result.

"And I think that will then be on the shoulders of the government and the service, to take responsibility for that."

REBECCA MITCHELL,
Former Melbourne Paramedic (now working in regional Victoria)