In the thrilling career of emergency medical services in Alberta, it seems the real emergency has become the staggering number of paramedics who are trading in their full-time positions for casual gigs or outright waving goodbye to the profession altogether—walking away from pensions, benefits, and all the hard work required to enter this field. We’re going to talk about that but first, Alberta Health Services EMS leadership thinks that when we ask you, the reader for financial support to run our website, pay for our stickers, FOIP requests, and hosting fees, it’s somehow unprofessional.
Nothing says “AHS values our frontline workers” quite like retribution against us for raising funds to do the work necessary to point out their malfeasance. Even a dollar sent to our give-send-go shows them just how you feel about their leadership. Because we value transparency, we’re going to be posting about how your donations are spent. So please Support our Work. We'll keeping making FOIP requests for the statistical data you deserve to see from AHS.
Alberta Health Services has been scrambling to put a positive spin on their Staffing Crisis—because nothing screams “we're in control” quite like a good old-fashioned damage control strategy. The comms team at AHS must really hate their jobs, now that they’re being embarrassed over and over by our website's posts. We’ve previously FOIP’d and published their emails with EMS leadership, it clearly used to be fun for everyone involved spinning the EMeSS into palatable fodder for Albertans. Their game of ‘What if we just say this’ to keep everyone from knowing the truth must eat a piece of their soul every day. But the money is good, those Comms workers make Bank! So is it any wonder that real journalists love to go after AHS EMS? There’s a story here and it’s being covered up.
The comms team now looks at the mess AHS EMS leadership has made like:
Time and again, AHS EMS leadership trots ‘round to various Municipal Councils, assuring all they speak to that everything is just peachy, Vacant shifts? A few. Overworked staff? Sometimes, it’s part of the job (Not theirs, of course). This is the consistent narrative being pushed while the number of available Paramedics dwindles. It’s almost as if they think that if they ignore the growing issues long enough, it'll magically disappear. Spoiler alert: it won’t. We suspect their real goal is to keep the carousel spinning, keep everyone a little dizzy until EMS managers either retire or move up to more protected positions within AHS. The name Nick Thain comes immediately to mind. We have something to say about him sometime in the future! What would truly be effective for front-line Staff and Patients is new management or leadership strategy, but what we’ve gotten is anything but. For proof, is a headline from 2022:
The situation has only gotten worse over the years under AHS EMS leadership. Today their incompetence has paved the way towards a full blown staffing crisis, with paramedics either quitting or going casual. From unfilled shifts over the holidays to shortages during Calgary’s biggest events, it’s clear this is systemic problem born of managerial indifference at best, and inability or ineptitude at worst.
The situation never seems to be able to improve, with Paramedics either quitting or going casual and pushing us into this aforementioned full-blown Staffing Crisis. The only thing Paramedics seem to be able to count on is the names of managers changing, but the syle of leadership remaining exactly the same. From unfilled shifts over the holidays to shortages during Calgary’s biggest events, it’s clear this is systemic. The scramble to keep things looking “normal” is both tragic and amusing. AHS keeps insisting everything’s fine, but paramedics are cracking under the pressure. How many Paramedics chose to swap the chaos for something quieter— like watering houseplants or making sourdough? More likely, they’re eyeing other careers in healthcare, Police or Fire, Roofing or Real estate. Ryan Middleton's takedown of Tony Pasich's claim about EMS retention rates—revealing the average paramedic career lasts just eight years—would be funny if it weren’t so tragic, and an outright lie Told by Calgary's executive Director, Tony Pasich to Airdrie Town Councillors on the Safety Committee.
As we gear up to explore the staggering statistics behind this mass exodus of EMS personnel, one thing is clear: the once-reliable backbone of our emergency medical response system is in a state of total disarray. The reality facing the ditch doctors is a far cry from the rosy picture painted by the AHS Spin Doctors. The work we’re doing is absolutely necessary to understand just how deep this crisis runs. We’re going to do it with AHS FOIP provided facts that leadership will call continue to call “out of context”.
For those of you Veteran Paramedics, (defined as having worked here longer than two years) you’ll remember back in 2022 there was a blitz of additional ambulances added to the Calgary Zone. Four were added in July, according to announcements from Alberta Health Services (source), and another five were added by September 2022 (source). Additionally, peak ambulance coverage in Chestermere and Okotoks increased from 12-hour to 24-hour coverage, though statistically, this only counts as one ambulance between the two (source).
So, in 2022, the Calgary zone saw 10 new ambulances added to the fleet. By this logic, with two paramedics per ambulance across four platoons for 24/7 coverage, about 80 paramedic positions would be required. Assuming you'd need an additional 8 relief staff on the low end, the total would come to roughly 88 new positions.
Since April 2020, AHS EMS in the Calgary Zone has lost 109 paramedics to resignations and retirement. During the same period, 105 full-time paramedics reduced their hours to part-time, equating to a loss of 52.5 full-time positions. Additionally, 98 part-time paramedics increased their hours to full-time, creating 49 full-time equivalent positions.
However, 374!!!! paramedics vacated their full-time roles and switched to casual positions.
This brings the running tally to a loss of 391.5 paramedic positions in the Calgary Zone. In a FOIP request sent into us last night we also identified something very interesting that we just cannot ignore. To AHS EMS’s credit they had 330 casual paramedics assume full-time roles, which might seem to improve the situation, right? So, with only 61.5 vacant positions, that doesn't sound too bad, right?
WRONG! The devil is in the details as with all things that come out of AHS EMeSS.
So we ask the question, why include this unsolicited piece of information, and what aren't they telling us? Well, they’ve since allowed for the existence of casual full-time equivalent positions, do these add to that number? We don't have a breakdown of how many of these roles are in MIH/Community Care, how about the safe injection site. Do they contribute? What about people who are hired as casual, and are offered full time jobs while still in training? How many of those people are moved into TFT's to cover a person who has been moved into a supervisor role? There has been LOTS of those lately because management could care less about bad optics, they love their supervisors, just not the actual Paramedics... Apparently.
Perhaps most egregious to consider in AHS's stats of casual employees that moved into Full time positions is how about people covering for leaves of absence for say injury? Essentially something is a miss with these 330 casuals to Full Time positions they seem so proud of:
Looking to research done by Ryan Middleton we can only surmise that many of those casual to full time transitions that AHS EMS sent in a FOIP request, which again was not asked for, but was provided for anyway, have to be, in large part people being moved from Casual to TFT's in order to cover various forms of leaves of absence, most strikingly injuries. This is to be assumed because the from 2020 to 2024 there was only 32 people who did not previously work in Calgary Zone moved into TFT's and if you believe there were only 32 TFT's in this time frame we have a bridge to sell you! Lets look at injury rates in EMS, again uncovered by Ryan:
It might be tempting to detract from this and point out that not all of these injuries lead to a WCB claim, and though that is true, the WCB claim numbers in and of themselves are staggering. Even looking at the last 3 years where we examined employment numbers WCB injuries on average are 654 injuries. Calgary and Edmonton likely have a disproportional amount of those injuries, but if we spread those across all 5 zones equally that comes out to 130 WCB injuries per zone per year. The highest year for Casual to Full-Time transitions is 91. Do you see how the optics of this are actually really bad yet?
Essentially, the gains that AHS makes on their Casual to Full-Time transitions evaporate faster than water in a desert.
Lastly, lets look at hiring, Calgary Zone has only hired 50 new paramedics into regular full-time positions, and one into a regular part-time position during the same time frame. That is it.... The rest? 353 more casual employees, making it shockingly obvious, no one wants to work full time in this organization anymore, and is anyone truly surprised?
The big take away from all this is that AHS EMS is facing a staggering staffing deficit compared to where they were in the fiscal year 2020. And this doesn’t even account for all the new paramedic positions that have been added to Calgary Zone since 2020. Is there any wonder then by July 20 this year there were already thousands of Paramedic shifts vacant?
AHS EMS is bleeding staff, shift vacancies in just a single zone total in the thousands, and there are 5 zones! But it gets worse, its AHS EMS it always gets worse, led by the finest kinds of incompetence, armed with Royal Roads University Masters degrees. From research done by Ryan Middleton, since 2019 Alberta Health Services has been staffing 33 fewer Ambulances across the province per day.
We'd love to be shocked, but this has been a known issue for years. In 2022 the former Chief Paramedic did and interview on just this issue. In that instance Darren Sandbeck’s statements were nothing short of word salad. Want to judge for yourself? Read here. It’s classic AHS EMS PR—vague and non-committal. They’re "coping" by hiring...with no target in sight. No plan, no goals, just endless recruitment. After all, if you don’t define success, you can never fail! Throw in vague promises about shift changes, and voilà—problem solved? It was then as it is now, AHS EMS Leadership summed up by a Bat Man villain:
To further outline this point at their terrible recruiting plans, or lack there of, the Parkland institute also arrived at a similar conclusion about AHS EMS's hiring practices, hiring without a set plan. According to. the report, Alberta Health Services had acknowledged the current EMS staffing crisis and stated their approach is to continue hiring without a set target. They aim to hire across all five zones of the province to meet the demands of a widely dispersed population (Lights and Sirens: The Critical Condition of EMS in Alberta, page 40).
There are real consequences to a plan that’s basically, “let’s just cross our fingers and hope for the best.” The best analogy is one we’re all familiar with. If a patient is bleeding out… Sure, Paramedics can pump ‘em full of blood but if we don’t STOP THE BLEED this Patient isn’t going to survive.
As most of EMS leadership spent many years as front-line and are still Paramedics - well, not Anne. (For clarity she became an ACP and then a deployment manager, without any meaningful length of street time working as a Paramedic), you’d think they’d still have a faint memory of how this works. Same principle goes for hiring, let’s just toss more people into a broken system and hope something magical happens. Maybe it's just been so long since Leadership spent any time on an Ambulance they believe this:
Here's where Douglas is going yell at the referee, “Out of Context!” but we know that there are experienced applicants for positions at EMS who are willing to do Transfers but not allow EMS managers to subject them to the abuse of Emergency Calls. When told they may have to do shifts on an Emergency Ambulance they’re walking away. If only the hiring AHS EMeSS strategy could have a picture to go with it.... OH!
Alberta Health Services EMS could be doing great—better than anywhere else in Canada, actually. With 201 paramedics per 100,000 people, Alberta has more paramedics per capita than any other province (Lights and Sirens: The Critical Condition of EMS in Alberta, page 36) CTV article. Yet, somehow, AHS has managed to earn the worst reputation. Why has this happened? Let us know in the comments. In our opinion though, the issue isn’t the front-line paramedics, it’s the masterminds running the show. At this point, their bloated leadership feels more like a tragic comedy than actual management. No wonder we keep dreaming of the day we imagine this happening:
As stated, this is a two-part story, and if you are reading this and you've quit your career in EMS and gone onto greener pastures but would like to tell your story we want to hear from you. We’ve got a couple of relatable stories already and if you want to be share your experiences in the upcoming Part II please let us know.
If you want to be anonymous, we’ll never reveal your identity. If you’re now beyond their reach and want your name published beside your words, we’d love to help you shine a light. When you email us, include your qualifications (PCP ACP EMR) and how many years of experience you have.
In the grand finale of this absurdist theater, let's not forget that EMS managers are really not thrilled (it’s true, they’re quite upset) about our little fundraising venture on Give-Send-Go!: Support Our Cause.
Apparently, they think it’s unprofessional—because what’s more professional than Letting Your Team Bleed Out while you bumble through your meetings, doing nothing constructive while the system teeters and burns?
So, if you’re feeling particularly rebellious, why not flip them off in style? Join us, help our work, pitch in a few bucks and help us shine a bright spotlight on their incompetence and dishonesty. They’ve turned a critical staffing crisis into a punchline and we’re not going to let them hide or ignore the truth.
If you're working in any of the FIVE EMS ZONES and want to participate with us, reach out by email at ambulanceman4@gmail.com, and we can discuss how to proceed! Let’s give AHS EMS the world-class roast they deserve! We want to do the best we can to have your back because Leadership won't.
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