Yes Straube
– Using the Health Personnel Act’s provisions that we are obliged to save life and health in order to save money is an exploitation of the ambulance personnel, says Charles Aune-Lundberg.
He is a local union representative for the Trade Union at AMK(*1) at the University Hospital of Northern Norway (UNN).
– In the ambulance service, it is well known that there may be urgent assignments. It is part of the nature of the work, and part of “normal operations”, he says.
Colleagues in and around Oslo are frustrated by unpredictable overtime.
– The fact that employees do not know when they can go home from work is a challenge that has lasted for a long time. It is a big burden for the employee, says paramedic and main shop steward Morten Marthinsen in this case.
Charles Aune-Lundberg in Tromsø therefore believes that the service must be planned so that the text of the Working Environment Act on working hours and leisure time is followed.
He refers to section 10.1 of the Working Environment Act, which states that “time off work means the time the employee is not available to the employer”.
“Planned” overtime
– When a hospital repeatedly sends out an ambulance where you obviously know that it will not make it back before the end of working hours, it is a form of planned overtime, he says.
He believes a lack of understanding and respect for employees’ free time is widespread in several parts of the health service.
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He does not like the reality description he has heard from his ambulance colleagues in Oslo, where the ambulances are available for the emergency center right up to the shift change.
– That the practice is allowed to take place on a national basis is a culture we would ideally like to change so that we get working hours that are predictable, regardless of whether you work in an office or a hospital, he says.
Has reduced the use of overtime to a minimum
In Tromsø, they have worked for years to solve the overtime problem. The ambulance workers have tried to propose that the new shift comes to work earlier, so that the shifts overlap by an hour.
They have not been able to get this through, but shop stewards at the ambulance station in Tromsø have agreed compensatory measures in the calendar planning work to get closer to the provisions of the Working Environment Act:
• 15-30 minutes before the change of duty, the ambulance that goes off duty must, as a general rule, finish its last mission and return to the station. It gives the paramedics time for necessary administrative tasks, such as on-call reporting, washing cars and uniforms.
• Well before the ambulances change of duty, the AMK center shuts down all activity that can wait, in order to free up capacity.
Examples of missions that wait until there is a free resource that can be completed within working hours are: Green missions, such as driving to and from planned ambulance flight missions, and some yellow urgent missions closer to the shift change.
– This has reduced the use of overtime to a minimum. But there is still overtime several times a week in Tromsø too, so we are probably not quite on target, says Aune-Lundberg.
Hoping for improvement in 2024
– We have looked at what they have done in Tromsø and which solutions can be transferred, says ambulance manager Ola Borstad at Oslo University Hospital (OUS).
The ambulance manager says that OUS takes the problem of high overtime usage very seriously. He also does not believe that it is reasonable for the employees of the ambulance service to take up their free time to be available.
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– It is proposed to remove cars from the screen here as well. But there are challenges with that too, he says.
There are several objections to such a measure. If people are told that there are no cars available, at the same time as they see ambulances passing by, it can seem strange.
– It is difficult to outline those solutions. That is what we discuss in the working group. We are working on the matter and looking at all alternative solutions. The intention is that it should work well for our employees without reducing the offer to our patients, says the ambulance manager.
*1 The emergency medical communication center operates the emergency number.
