An ambulance did not arrive until 36 minutes after a fatal skydiving accident was reported in Gimli over the weekend, a Manitoba Shared Health spokesman said in an email on Tuesday.
Jean du Toit, a 53-year-old experienced paratrooper, was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash Saturday night.
People at Gimli Industrial Park called for an ambulance at 7:11 p.m., and an ambulance was dispatched about two minutes later. However, the nearest available ambulance at the time traveled from an area northeast of Selkirk and arrived at the scene at 7:47 p.m., Shared Health said.
The provincial health organization acknowledged that the response time was “significantly longer” than its operational goals.
At the time of the 911 call, an ambulance from the Gimli area was in Eriksdale, an hour’s drive away, while a second ambulance based in the Gimli area was out of service, the spokesman said.
Emergency resources were strategically placed across Interlake through a “flexible deployment approach,” but coverage over the weekend was reduced due in part to a large number of sick staff calls. , said Shared Health.
Efforts to call in temporary staff to fill were unsuccessful.
In a press release on Monday, the RCMP said they were called at around 7.25pm. When officers arrived, they found a woman on the ground who did not respond and was receiving medical attention from other people at the scene. An RCMP officer began helping and paramedics arrived “within minutes,” police said Monday.
Bob Moroz, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Professionals, which represents 6,500 Manitoba health workers, said Monday in a statement that rural ambulances currently have a staff shortage of 20 to 25 percent. one hundred.
“Our hearts are with the family and loved ones affected by this tragic event,” Moroz said in a statement.
The Manitoba Association of Health Professionals says rural ambulances currently have a staffing gap of 20 to 25 percent. (Riley Laychuk / CBC)
The union “renews its call on Shared Health, the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister to address the worsening shortage of staff now.”
Shared Health says recruitment efforts to fill vacancies in the emergency response service, which have increased throughout the pandemic, remain a province-wide priority.
The organization says a centralized recruitment team has been set up to incorporate emergency response service personnel, including paramedics.
Two recruitment coordinators were recently hired to assist them with this work.
Shared Health says it is moving towards a paramedic staffing model 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to reduce the system’s reliance on overtime or on-call scheduling and to improve care. to the patient.
It is also working to increase educational capacity for high-demand professions within emergency response services, Shared Health spokesman said.