https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-64190442?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGAAmbulance staff will take part in their second day of strike action this winter, on Wednesday. Alongside paramedics, call-centre staff will walk out across England and Wales in the dispute over pay. These workers play a vital role, taking calls from the public and assigning ambulance crews.[/size]
An ambulance dispatcher at the North West Ambulance Service, who wishes to stay anonymous, has described working amid the extreme pressures of this winter.
"The job is crushingly depressing, stressful and embarrassing," the dispatcher says. "I feel so destroyed. The feeling of saving lives has been taken over by how many can we not kill.
"I never thought I'd leave the NHS - but I'd take a job at Aldi. I'd take a job cleaning.
"The thought of going in and having to manage those calls just fills me with absolute dread. I have seen people leave the ambulance service - they have had enough. We are physically and mentally exhausted."
Most frustrating, the dispatcher says, is the number of crews stuck outside hospital waiting to hand patients over to accident-and-emergency staff.
In the last week of 2022, more than 40% of crews in England had waits of more than 30 minutes - it should take 15.
"I know going in that I will have to dispatch ambulance crews to hospitals to take over from other ambulance crews who have been outside for 12 hours," the dispatcher says.
"It just means we don't have those crews available to respond to calls and it exacerbates our shortness of resources by 10-fold, 100-fold.
"So instead of going out on jobs, the first thing they do is go to the hospitals and free the ambulance staff up to go home. Those staff could have been there the whole shift virtually. This happens every shift at virtually every hospital.
Record number of ambulances queue at A&E
