Pregnant first responders speak out about attacks on the job
Ambulance Victoria paramedic Elena Ciavarella was 12 weeks pregnant when she was punched in the face by a woman she was trying to save.
The patient, who overdosed on heroin, attacked Ciavarella while he was being taken to the hospital and punched him in the head and stomach.
Despite the attack, Ciavarella continued to treat the woman for another 40 minutes. That’s when he decided to get off the road, he said.
“The first thing that goes through my mind is, is my baby okay?” happened. Ciavarella told Nine News on Wednesday.
“And then here we are faced with imminent danger and risk. So that was my time on the road, it ended right then and there.”
Fellow paramedic Madeleine Caoduro was also attacked at work in January, when she was eight weeks pregnant, and a patient in Clayton kicked and spat at her.
He said he was already more intimidated by the job, but hearing about Ciavarella’s experience led him to request an office assignment sooner than he had previously planned.
“Regardless of what we want and what we want to do, this is very real and we have no choice. We feel like we have no choice,” he said.
“We have to get off the road because it’s not safe anymore.”
These are just two stories of a series of violent attacks on Victorian paramedics that have recently come to light, leading to legal change to jail perpetrators who attack emergency service workers.
Last month, a paramedic was stabbed in the face and neck as he got out of a car to get a coffee at the Reservoir, and the attack only ended when a good Samaritan stepped in.
Injuring an emergency worker in Victoria has been a category 1 offense since 2018; This means that courts must sentence those found guilty to at least six months in prison in this case. The maximum penalty is five years’ imprisonment.
However, in late February this imprint A man who attacked a paramedic avoided a mandatory prison sentence because the paramedic failed to treat the patient when he was attacked, it has been revealed.
Following last month’s attack, in which the senior paramedic with two decades of experience administered first aid to himself – despite bleeding profusely – until colleagues arrived, Ambulance Victoria chief executive Jordan Emery said it was “completely unacceptable” that paramedics were subjected to violence “on a daily basis”.
“We need to spend time reflecting on how we got to a place where more than 1,000 paramedics are attacked every year in Victoria. It’s absolutely disgraceful,” Emery said.
Emery said that although paramedics were deeply shaken by the attack on their colleague, “many of our employees expected this and I couldn’t do enough to get to this point.”
Following calls from the ambulance union to introduce tougher laws, Prime Minister Jacinta Allan said last month she was determined to change.
“Victims and union representatives have raised the issue of gaps in the law, potentially undermining the protection that emergency workers deserve,” Allan said.
“We are committed to fixing this problem. We will be asking the Victorian Law Reform Commission to review the definition of ‘on duty’ and ensure there are no gaps.”
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