St John ambulance has apologised to a female patient and disciplined a paramedic who told her she had a throat infection and hadn’t drunk enough water when she actually had pneumonia. An internal investigation also found the staff member had made inappropriate comments about the woman’s anxious mother, which the ambulance service has labelled “extremely unprofessional, offensive and unwarranted”. Two St John paramedics were called to the woman’s East Auckland home in July 2017 after her mother called 111, saying her daughter was struggling to breathe. The woman said the male paramedic told her she had “brought this on herself for not drinking enough water”, after saying she didn’t like water much. “I was very upset, I was made to feel as though I was wasting his time and that neither me or my symptoms mattered. I was apparently just being dramatic,” the woman said. Her mother said the male paramedic diagnosed her daughter with a throat infection and made the comment that “there were already 600 patients at Middlemore ED just like her”. The mother said she was shocked as she was genuinely fearing for her daughter’s life at the time. “I could see she was terrified and he … wouldn’t help her,” the mother said. “My daughter then told me that while in the back of the ambulance [the male paramedic] said to his partner they should have been treating the mother and pointed to his head and alluded that I was unhinged.” The woman was diagnosed with pneumonia once she got to hospital and remained unwell for several months. Her mother laid a complaint with St John.
