Ambulance Victoria has given universities with paramedic courses 12 weeks to sign a contract over funding agreements if their students are to continue taking part in the AV placement program.
The reported cost is about five times the profit some universities make from running the course — and meeting the financial request will allegedly make the course not viable at a leading Victorian university.
An anonymous student from Monash University says she has been told by university authorities that “if this is to occur they will have to discontinue the paramedic courses”.
“This cost between all students could run to over a million [dollars], something which Monash at least cannot afford,” she says.
AV quality and education general manager Angelia Dixon says only “initial discussions” have started and “no start date has been set as we are continuing to consult with the universities around preferred timelines for implementation”.
But Victoria University course co-ordinator Peter Hartley says that, while the proposal will not affect the VU course, universities have received a deadline.
“Contract arrangements have been delivered to universities and the expectation is that we’ll have them signed well before the end of the year,” he says.
The placement is an essential part of the training required to become a paramedic but the Monash student says the supervising paramedics “often have no or little training and many agree to take students just for the extra pay”.
“The issue here is that we are being asked to pay for an already substandard service,” she says.
Both political parties have addressed paramedic shortages in their policies for the upcoming state election, with Premier John Brumby promising an additional 105 paramedics by mid-2011 and Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu pledging 340 more over the next four years.
But a failure to meet the New Year’s Day deadline means that students intending to graduate midway through 2011 will be ineligible — another blow to the state’s already struggling paramedic numbers.
This is just cost shifting from Ambulance Victoria to universities and ultimately the Australian Government, as state departments of education and health have shifted part of the cost of pay increases for teachers and nurses to the Australian Government via substantial charges for supervising trainee teachers and nurses.
These are the same departments, of course, that continually whinge about what they call a ‘shortage’ of graduates to fill the large number of places left by trained teachers and and nurses who resign mid career because of unattractive working conditions.
The idea of charging for on the job training is nonsensicle in a world where such training is in everybodies interest. Queensland has of course developed its own way of dealing with the shortage of paramedics, they steal them from other countries offering inducements which turn out to be lies, then they force them to work rotating 12 hour shifts. ie 2 12 hour day shifts, followed by 2 12 hour night shifts, workings which are completely illegal under ILO conventions, but completely legal in Anna Blighs Queensland, where they also breach Labors own working hours policies. And hey, every second shift is so busy that the paramedics get NO meal break at all. They all look very very tired.
I agree that charging for job training seems to defeat the purpose of the exercise if not entirely nonsensical, altho of course in the 19th century masters used to charge to take on apprentices.
The hospitals don’t yet charge for training medical students, but I expect the current stand-off over training places for international medical students is the hospitals trying to charge for them.
The paramedic profession is still behind that of other allied health professions. This is an issue that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later as large numbers of graduate paramedics hit the streets following on from recruitment promises made. Paramedics are now highly trained and operate independently in the field, clinical mentoring is crucial to ensure that these new paramedics qualify with good judgment and the ability to practice safely.
Additionally, although i will not disagree that some paramedic students have less than satisfactory experiences on placement this is not always the case. I would hate to see the paramedics who take an interest in students, and work hard to make placements both enjoyable and worthwhile, discredited. It really is appreciated.