Recruitment and retention is a key issue for ambulance services: Fewer

The owner of Fewer’s Ambulance Service says recruitment and retention remains one of the key issues facing his ambulance service.

Bob Fewer says the problem, as in most areas of the health care industry, is recruitment and retention, and he currently needs 40 PCPs to make up a full contingent.

Until two years ago, Fewer’s had between 25 and 40 Ontario employees, but during that time those PCPs moved back to that province.

“We’re going to be short and our schools can’t produce them,” says Malko. There aren’t enough PCPs out there, he says.

He welcomed the new legislation but acknowledged it would take a long time to get over some of the bad blood created during the strike.

PC leadership candidate Tony Wakeham calls the Ambulance Essential Services Act for striking rural ambulance workers a “band-aid for a broken ambulance system.”

Wakeham says the real, long-term solution is a single, provincial, modern and integrated ambulance system, as recommended in the Health Accord.

He says the time for such a system is long overdue and he calls the strike an inevitable consequence of the government’s refusal to act on consistent reports reflecting the best advice of frontline health professionals.