St John to open up new facility

Government and health professionals are hopeful a new $5 million St John Ambulance sub-centre in Broome will boost the local branch’s volunteer base and improve its service to the community.

Announced by Regional Australia Minister Simon Crean last week, the new facility will house the North West regional office, a training area and a six-bay ambulance garage.

Mr Crean said the project was collaborative, and would receive $2.5 million through the second round of the Regional Development Australia Fund grant, $2 million from the State Government and $500,000 from ambulance service provider St John.

“This has the capacity to double the number of paramedics that are here and when you think that Broome responds to something like 3300 calls each year, you get an idea of the magnitude of the pressure that is on the people that perform the service,” he said.

The minister said remote towns such as Broome required essential infrastructure to enhance the delivery of essential services.

St John WA chief executive Tony Ahern said the facility was part of ambulance service’s State plan to increase resources in the regions and deliver better patient outcomes.

He said it would attract more volunteers by increasing training capacity in a better environment. Mr Ahern dismissed recent claims by local volunteer John Spry Broome’s emergency service was in “crisis” because of overwhelming workloads being placed on “limited” numbers of volunteers.

The ambulance service chief Mr Ahern said seven paramedics would join the team later this month, with more volunteer opportunities, with a volunteer to be paired with a paramedic.

“It will help the workload … by having that amount of paramedics we’ve got much more capability with paid staff at times we can’t get volunteers,” he said.

“But it doesn’t lessen our need for volunteers..”

Mr Ahern said when more paramedics were placed in a location, St John was more successful in attracting volunteers because of one-on-one training-mentoring opportunities.

“Getting the number (of paramedics) up to seven will certainly help us increase our volunteer numbers here even more.”