News
15th March, 2021
Meal Breaks
Rest assured the VAU will be prosecuting this matter and are currently considering legal options arising under both the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and Occupational Health & Safety Act 2004 (Vic).
The Victorian Ambulance Union Incorporated (VAU) have recently received multiple examples of crews experiencing late meal breaks, missing meal breaks altogether or being directed to have meal breaks at hospital.
Recent increases in demand have led to an increase in the utilisation of escalation protocols, pursuant to the Emergency Response Plan to ‘Code Orange’ and ‘Code Red’ level by Ambulance Victoria (AV).
In previous years, the use of Code Orange and Code Red were limited to sudden high workload generating events such as thunderstorm asthma events. However, members are reporting far more frequent escalation to Code Orange and Code Red level outside the occurrence of major emergencies.
Under these escalation levels, AV may upgrade lower acuity cases to a higher acuity coding which has a subsequent impact on access to meal breaks. By way of example, under Code Orange, a Code 3 case may be upgraded to Code 1 which will allow AV to dispatch the case to a crew in the hour after a meal break window of opportunity.
On 11 March 2021, the VAU wrote to AV and formally requested the following information:
- The dates, times and duration of all escalations to Code Orange from 1 January 2019 to date, including identifying the factors leading to the escalation (such as workload or serious event such as thunderstorm asthma); and
- The dates, times and duration of all escalations to Code Red from 1 January 2019 to date, including identifying the factors leading to the escalation (such as workload or serious event such as thunderstorm asthma.
The VAU hold serious concerns about the increased use of the escalation protocols pursuant to the Emergency Response Plan to bypass the meal break and other provisions of your enterprise agreement. Escalations for major emergencies and sudden unexpected increases in demand are to be expected but this practice should not be used on a systematic basis to respond to increased demand resulting from inadequate resourcing and ambulance ramping.
Members have also raised concerns about being directed to complete meal breaks at hospital. At times of high workload and high stress, the need to return to a branch to complete a meal break is vitally important. Meal Breaks are not just about consuming a meal. They provide members with the ability to remove themselves from the high stress environment of the ambulance and hospitals and have a short period of time to destress. This is not only important for the mental health of crews but also as a control measure to reduce the risk of fatigue.
Missing or delaying a meal break during times of high stress is a safety issue and members are advised that a HSCS should be completed anytime they are unable to complete a meal break at a suitable location.
Rest assured the VAU will be prosecuting this matter and are currently considering legal options arising under both the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and Occupational Health & Safety Act 2004 (Vic).
Note: The VAU is not suggesting in any way that our Duty Managers (DM) and Communication Support Paramedics (CSP) are in anyway responsible for this current practice. In recent days the VAU have been contacted by many concerned DM and CSP members alarmed at the escalating issue for on-road crews surrounding meal breaks.