By Malcolm Strachan

ONE of the less heralded jobs of government is to connect the dots – the management of resources.

When things don’t quite connect up, you end up with inefficiency, wasted expenditure – and situations such as the current one where a debate surrounds police officers being asked to pull double duty as ambulance drivers in the Family Islands.

The move comes as part of an initative launched by the Public Hospitals Authority, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

The problem is a shortage of emergency medical technicians (EMTs) in the Family Islands. The solution that has been put forward is police officers taking on duties where EMTs are not available.

Let’s look at some of those dots to connect. First thing first, it is great that ambulances are available – especially given the concerns there have been over fire engines on various islands over the past year.

But when those ambulances are being purchased, equipped and deployed, there has to be the question of who will drive them, where will they be based and what does it take to have the unit fully operational.

A police officer is not a medical technician. Consider it this way, would you ever imagine EMTs being asked to pull double duty as police officers? Absolutely not – they are very separate professions with very different skillsets.

Former National Security Minister Marvin Dames got straight to the point when he said: “The real issue is: why aren’t there enough EMTs? Why are we calling on police now to do this work with no clear timeframe or exit strategy? These officers are already doing more than what their jobs require. This just adds another burden.”

Think about that burden for a moment. Ambulance service is a 24/7 service – one never knows at what hour of day there might be a traffic accident, or at what hour of night a resident might be taken ill at home. This is one of those management of resources issues – if a police officer already has a full-time job, then is running ambulance duties on their off-hours, how do you manage those extra working hours? Do they get time back – even when a 24/7 service still has to be provided – or do they get paid extra? And if so, what extra financial burden is that overtime on the public purse, and how does that compare to simply hiring the EMTs in the first place?

Mr Dames called the plan “short-sighted”, adding: “There has to be something more to this than just cross-training police officers to drive ambulances.”

As he said: “You’re putting a Band-Aid on a systemic issue.”

His comments have certainly not been welcomed by his successor in the ministerial role, Wayne Munroe, who said Mr Dames’ comments were “petty, bitter and dripping with resentment”, claiming Mr Dames was “speaking like a man who was wrongfully denied a throne”.

That hardly helps to discuss the issue itself. He went on to say: “When Mr Dames attacks a policy that puts ambulances on the road and officers in a position to save lives, what exactly is he criticising?”

And here we’re back to connecting the dots. Why were the ambulances not in a position to be on the road in the first place? When purchased, what was the training and recruitment package in place for those who have to drive them and who first respond to scenes of violence, murder, accidents, illness and more?

Last year, as a donation was made of ballistic vests to emergency responders, concerns were raised about the effect of the crime rate on health staff.

National Emergency Medical Services Director Kevin Bell said: “We are a very busy high-volumne emergency response team and to add to the burnout, the normal burnout of our staff, is these murder scenes, these gunshot calls, it’s having a tremendous impact on our staff members mentally.”

The vest donations were to protect EMTs as they went in to treat people in areas of possible danger – not the “hot zone” as donors put it, but the “warm area”.

In practice, this means areas after, say, a shooting, where police officers have already gone in to secure the area with EMTs following soon after to treat people injured at the scene.

Mr Bell said: “What would happen is, when we get a call for a gunshot wound, our crew members would stay a distance away from the scene. Perhaps two corners away from the scene, and await the arrival of the police on the scene and then the police would confirm from their control room, where the dispatcher sits, that the scene is now safe and they can enter. And so our dispatchers will radio to the ambulance and say, okay, police are on scene, you can proceed.”

That all sounds very logical – but what happens when a police officer is having to pull both of those duties?

Who treats the person if the police officer has to secure the area? Who protects the police officer if they have to treat the wounded?

Let alone the fact that the police officer, whatever training they may be given, will probably not have the level of expertise in medical training that an EMT may have. That’s not their fault, they signed up to be a police officer not a medic – but if you are the person lying on the floor bleeding, you want the best help possible.

And one would imagine the Police Staff Association might want to know if their officers are having to do two jobs instead of one whether they are going to be paid for two jobs.

Again, if this is a short-term fix, that’s one thing – but how did we get into the position of having ambulances in place without having the staff to operate them?

Overly defensive comments do not get us anywhere. That suggests that this is actually just fine, and Family Islands should just expect to have a lesser life-saving service on a prolonged basis – and that should not be the case.

I don’t care who is responsible for the lack of connected thinking – which party ordered the ambulances, which party failed to deliver the trained personnel to go with them, I just want people to get the care they deserve.

So join the dots. Tell us how long this will be for. Tell us when the EMTs will be hired and trained and in place.