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When she was 12 weeks pregnant, Ambulance Victoria paramedic Elena Ciavarella was punched in the face by a woman she was trying to save.
The patient, who had suffered a heroin overdose, lashed out as she was being offloaded in hospital and punched Ciavarella in the head and stomach.
Despite the attack, Ciavarella continued to treat the woman for a further 40 minutes. That was the moment, she said, she decided to come off the road.
“The first thing that went through my mind is, is my baby OK?” Ciavarella told Nine News on Wednesday.
“And then, we’re in imminent danger and risk here. So that was my time on the road, it ended right then and there.”
Fellow paramedic Madeleine Caoduro was also assaulted while at work in January, when she was eight weeks pregnant, and a patient in Clayton kicked and spat on her.
She said she had already become more fearful of the job, but hearing Ciavarella’s experience prompted her to request an office role earlier than she’d previously planned.
“Irrespective of what we want and what we would like to do, it’s too real, and we don’t have a choice. we feel like we don’t have a choice,” she said.
“We’ve got to come off the road because it’s not safe anymore.”
These are just two stories in a string of violent attacks on Victorian paramedics that have come to light recently, prompting legislative change to jail perpetrators who assault emergency service workers.
Last month, a paramedic was stabbed in the face and neck in Reservoir after alighting from their vehicle to get coffee, with the assault ending only after a good Samaritan stepped in.
Injuring an emergency worker has been a category 1 offence in Victoria since 2018, meaning courts must impose a prison sentence – in this case at least six months – for those found guilty. The maximum penalty is five years in jail.
However, in late February, this masthead revealed a man whose attack on a paramedic left her in hospital had avoided the mandatory jail term because the paramedic was not treating a patient when she was attacked.
Following last month’s attack, where the veteran paramedic with two decades’ experience performed first aid on himself – despite bleeding profusely – until his colleagues arrived, Ambulance Victoria chief executive Jordan Emery said it was “completely unacceptable” for paramedics to face violence “on a daily basis”.
“We need to spend time reflecting on how we have come to a place where more than 1000 paramedics are assaulted every single year in Victoria. It is absolutely disgraceful,” Emery said.
Emery said that despite paramedics being deeply shaken by the attack on their colleague, “so many of our people have come to expect it, and I can’t labour that point enough.”
Following calls from the ambulance union to introduce harsher laws, Premier Jacinta Allan last month said she was committed to change.
“Victims and union representatives have raised the issue of loopholes in the law, potentially undermining the protections emergency workers deserve,” Allan said.
“We commit to fixing it. We will ask the Victorian Law Reform Commission to review the definition of ‘on duty’ and ensure there are no loopholes.”
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