Ambulance trust chief executive Ken Wenman has been urged to quit by his own staff over the trust’s failings
Paramedics have called on their own boss to resign over long waiting times for patients needing an ambulance.
Staff at the South West Ambulance Foundation Trust wrote an open letter calling on chief executive Ken Wenman to resign.
It comes amid a growing number of incidents where patients were left lying for help for several hours, with one woman dying due to failings
Kathryn Richmond, who was 20, died after waiting an hour and 25 minutes for an ambulance because of a catalogue of failings by ambulance bosses in 2015.
Ms Richmond suffered a ruptured spleen and lay, struggling for breath, as six of the 13 ambulances in east Dorset were off the road for meal breaks.
Ambulance staff say the chief executive has ‘clearly not only lost touch or interest with his employees and the service, but has now also lost their respect as well’.
The latter states: ‘Behind the professional facade we portray to the public we are struggling to maintain a crumbling service deliberately being underfunded by the Government and made worse when those over pressured resources and stressed staff are then badly managed locally.’
Staff say the overstretched service is being mismanaged and patients are suffering
Paramedic Rachel Gue, who was working as alone in a car, recently went online to bemoan how if took four hours to get to an 88-year-old woman in Torquay at 3am.
She posted on Facebook the delay was caused by other people calling the service irresponsibly.
Mr Wenman came under fire last year after spending thousands of pounds of public money gagging former workers despite saying they lacked money for a safe service.
He ran up extraordinary legal bills of more than £250,000 to prevent damaging stories about him being reported.
Paramedic Rachel Gue recently went online to reveal it took four hours to get to an 88-year-old woman who needed help
They included a claim – later dropped – that he sexually harassed a paramedic.
The letter calling for his resignation has come from Southern members of the GMB union which represents 40 per cent of the trust’s staff.
The letter continues: ‘We’re sorry for the patient and family members that have been left on the floor for hours as a consequence of not getting to you on time.
‘We’re sorry when you remain in the ambulance or in the hospital corridor for hours when we are stacked at A&E’s because we can’t complete our hand over.
‘We’re sorry that our employer is so poor in managing their resources that they are potentially putting your family at risk.
‘We’re sorry for not getting to you or your loved ones quick enough because there are just not enough of us or we are called out to answer non-emergency calls.’
Mr Wenman described the comments calling for him to resign as ‘disappointing’.