Brendan Simpkins

Details of the tragedy have emerged as the spotlight was last week shone on delayed response times in Gawler and other Adelaide areas.

It came after the Ambulance Employees Association (AEA) revealed last Wednesday that it took more than 40 minutes for a crew to respond to a stroke in Gawler East.

About 5.30am on January 26, 2020, a single responder was dispatched from Gawler Ambulance Station for a priority 1 cardiac arrest.

The responder was an intern who had been left by themselves after the other crew member had gone home sick at 3am.

Family members performed CPR on the male while the responder, who had arrived on scene within four minutes, remained stationed around the corner, prevented from entering the scene.

Though the responder had passed their authority-to-practise exams, they were instructed not to enter until backup arrived.

A backup crew was dispatched from Modbury Hospital, arriving 20 minutes later.

Meanwhile, the family continued to perform CPR while the intern waited around the corner with a defibrillator on standby.

Once backup arrived, the intern entered alongside the additional crew, and CPR was performed for 50 minutes. The patient died on the scene.

It is one of a number of cases in the past 18 months that have had tragic outcomes in Gawler.

The Bunyip has obtained details of a number of cases since March, two of which resulted in deaths.

The first occurred in March when a patient in Kingsford died from cardiac arrest after an ambulance did not arrive for 25 minutes.

The second, in Gawler, died after the nearest crew took more than 20 minutes to arrive from Redwood Park. This occurred in May.

Both instances were classified as priority one, which is supposed to have a response time of eight minutes or under.

Last Wednesday, an ambulance was dispatched from Parafield, with the patient transferred under lights and sirens to the Royal Adelaide Hospital for treatment.

The union said the patient could have been taken to the Lyell McEwin had the ambulance arrived on time. It was listed as a priority two, which requires an ambulance to respond in 16 minutes or under.

Similarly in March, SA Police transported a patient suffering a serious haemorrhage to Gawler Health Service after calling for ambulance backup, with none available.

The patient was later transferred to the RAH by Gawler’s crew, leaving Gawler without an ambulance stationed in town.

The Bunyip has previously reported on numerous occasions when Gawler has been left unmanned by an ambulance, either because of staff shortages or because it was responding outside of town.

In January, it was revealed Gawler was still being serviced by a sole ambulance, a year after a petition was launched by the AEA for a second vehicle.

The station has capacity to house up to four ambulances.

The AEA has been locked in highly-publicised enterprise-bargaining negotiations for the bulk of the year so far, with the union calling for an extra 300 paramedics.

Last Monday, the union and the State Government agreed on a deal that would deliver an additional 74 paramedics, with up to 24 being deployed to country stations.

SA Ambulance Service was contacted twice for comment regarding the cases but did not respond to either deadline before The Bunyip went to press.