Many years of lobbying for change has paid off for the Paramedic Association of New Brunswick.
Executive Director Chris Hood says $1.6 million from the province, means there will be more access to advanced paramedics, “Regardless of where these folks are working, whether it is in an ambulance or in their SUV, they should be able to practice their skills that they have. The government has agreed to outfit the system with enough equipment to allow that to happen.”
The program was introduced in 2017 in New Brunswick and Hood says this is the next step, but he’d like to see the role expanded even more, “We’re not done. We want to think about, how can we expand the role of the advanced paramedic, how can we advocate for more people to take that. We want to make sure this is available to as many residents as possible.”
Advanced care paramedics are trained to administer 15 more medications to treat things like heart attacks, extreme pain and seizures.
“We have about 70 advanced care paramedics in the province versus about over 1000 primary care, so there is quite a difference in the numbers and quite a difference in the required education. The opportunities for advanced paramedics was limited before this announcement. What we’ve seen by this is actually opening up the ability of these advanced care paramedics who were working in the ambulance system, but were not allowed to practice their advanced paramedic skills while they were working in ambulance. There were about 55 who are now able to employ their skills regardless of where they are,” Hood says.
He adds, “We think about 25 per cent of the base of paramedics should be advanced care. That would give us a more reasonable opportunities to treat as many patients as we think we can across the entire province, not just in the big cities.”
