Ambo sues over lifting injury caused by obese patient | The Courier-Mail

Kay Dibben

July 19, 2009 12:00am

AN ambulance officer is suing the State Government for more than $700,000 over injuries he says he suffered lifting an obese patient into an ambulance.

Wayne Fagg, 56, claims staff at Ingham Hospital failed or refused to help him lift the 120kg patient on a stretcher into the back of the ambulance in July 2006.

Mr Fagg, of Forrest Beach near Ingham, in north Queensland, had worked as an ambulance officer for 40 years but has not been able to work for the past three years.

He suffered multiple injuries, including a serious shoulder injury, when he tried to lift the patient into the back of an ambulance for transfer to Townsville Hospital.

Mr Fagg told The Sunday Mail reconstruction surgery on his right shoulder failed to improve it and he was left with a permanent impairment.

"I can't lift anybody, any weights. You can't do your job," Mr Fagg said.

At the time of his injury it was common for ambulance officers who were on their own to ask hospital staff for help to lift patients into ambulances, he said.

Mr Fagg's claim, filed in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, said that when a patient had to be transported by stretcher, the hospital was required to provide adequate assistance to load and unload patients.

Mr Fagg's claim alleges the hospital failed to have in place a system of safe transfer of patients into ambulances.

His claim for $727,000 damages for personal injury covers past and future economic loss that he believes he will suffer as a result of his impairment.

Ambulance union state organiser Jason Dutton said with greater numbers of obese people in society, the possibility of ambulance officers injuring themselves lifting patients had also increased.