Moorabool police drove a woman who slashed her wrists in the back of their divvy van to hospital after they’d waited an hour in Bacchus Marsh for an ambulance.
Police made the “operational decision” not to wait any longer as the woman in her 30s lay bleeding in the van.
Ambulance Victoria is reviewing the June 23 incident in which the three police officers attending to the woman were told of ambulance “delays and unavailability”.
Moorabool’s Inspector Brendon McCrory said two police officers and a supervising sergeant attended a home in Pentland Hills after being notified by Ballarat Health Services that a woman was in need of care.
“She was being taken into custody under Section 10 of the Mental Health Act,” he said.
“Ambulances were requested prior to transporting her – always the preferred method. No ambulance had attended and through the cameras in the back of the van we could see she had started to self-harm.
“As soon as they saw her behaving in this manner, officers immediately stopped that behaviour.”
Inspector McCrory said that after police communications made the officers aware of the delay and unavailability, they made the “correct decision” to take the woman to the hospital themselves.
“Her wounds were seen to by the sergeant before she was admitted to Ballarat Base Hospital,” he said.
According to Ambulance Employees Australia (AEA) secretary Danny Hill, the woman lost more than half a litre of blood.
“My information is there was no ambulance available between Ballarat and Deer Park,” he said.
He said paramedics from peripheral areas such as Bacchus Marsh get “sucked into the city” and are unable to get back where they should be.
“These outer-area ambulances will bring a patient to a hospital closer in, but once they’re clear at that hospital they’re the nearest crew to the city and will be despatched there,” he said.
An Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman said that while the case was suitable for an ambulance it did not require a lights and sirens response.
“The woman was conscious and breathing and the bleeding was not serious … we were in contact with Victoria Police regularly and received updates on her condition,” she said.
“Our preliminary inquiries show there may have been ambulances that could have been directed to this case in the one-hour time frame. More information is needed to understand why they weren’t.”
