In response to the Daily Mail article of 27 November, AACE Managing Director Martin Flaherty OBE, says:
“On behalf of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives I would like to make it clear to all ambulance personnel that we were very disappointed with today’s front-page Daily Mail article, which was disparaging towards ambulance technicians (EMTs) and in no way reflects the excellent work they do every day to care for patients and save lives.
“The inference was that EMTs are unable to manage patients with life-threatening conditions, including attending patients in cardiac arrest. This is obviously completely untrue and we made that point to the Daily Mail, as did many individual ambulance trusts.
“Despite a number of communications with the Daily Mail from across the ambulance service expressing the importance of EMTs to the whole NHS ambulance workforce, this was ignored, in favour of an attention-grabbing alarmist headline.
We hope staff will not feel demoralised by this unnecessary attack on our EMTs who make a massively positive input to patient care and to the NHS as a whole, and we are certain the public will feel the same.”
