‘People are just reaching a breaking point’: New Orleans EMS employees say pay, COVID burnout contributing to turnover and delays in care

The weeks leading up to Mardi Gras typically mean a relentless work schedule for emergency responders in New Orleans. But some years are worse for them than others. Mardi Gras 2020, the last Carnival season before COVID-19 shut down annual parties and city-permitted parades, was one of the bad ones. 

“Last Mardi Gras was awful,” a New Orleans Emergency Medical Services paramedic said in a recent interview. 

“That was the one where two people got run over. We worked two weeks straight, with no breaks. And then, we had maybe one week where Mardi Gras was over.”

“Then COVID happened, and we have not had a break since.”

More than a year and a half later, the city is now in its fourth COVID surge due to the highly infectious delta variant. 

The paramedic, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because city policy prohibits employees from speaking directly to the press, described overwhelming work conditions that have led to turnover in the EMS during the past few weeks, and said that they were the culmination of issues with pay and burnout that precede the pandemic.

“People are just reaching a breaking point. Not even new people,” said the paramedic. “People who have been through some ups and downs with New Orleans EMS already. If those people are leaving, that means something’s wrong.”

About 20 percent of the budgeted operations staff have quit this year, and because of additional staffing shortages partly related to COVID cases, the agency is down several ambulances on each shift.

The paramedic said that during much of the delta surge, which began last month, even the most serious calls sometimes didn’t receive an ambulance for an hour, and that medics didn’t have time to completely clean ambulances between shifts, or to use the bathroom or eat.

A second New Orleans EMS paramedic — also speaking to The Lens on the condition of anonymity — confirmed that account, though added that state-funded relief ambulances, which arrived in the city earlier this month, have alleviated those conditions for the moment. Still, the second said, pre-existing issues, including a lack of hazard pay, mean that the staffing shortages will likely return when the relief ambulances are gone.

“It’s obviously necessary,” the second paramedic said. “My concern is, what’s going to happen when they leave? It’s just a Band-Aid. We need a long-term plan, not a short term solution.”

“We’ve been asking for these changes for years,” the first paramedic said. “These long wait times for an ambulance are not going to magically go away. As of right now, we receive constant lip service from the powers that be, thanking us on social media but not making any meaningful change to improve our situation.”

Read the full article here: https://thelensnola.org/2021/08/24/people-are-just-reaching-a-breaking-point-new-orleans-ems-employees-say-pay-covid-burnout-contributing-to-turnover-and-delays-in-care/