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Russell Burgess: “He would have made a very good paramedic.”
The husband of a student paramedic who killed himself after failing his exams today claimed there were too few safeguards to prevent similar tragedies.
Russell Burgess, 39, was found dead at home in Hackney on July 4, a day after he had failed three re-sits in his bid to qualify as a London Ambulance Service paramedic.
Mr Burgess had worked for LAS for 13 years, first in the 999 call centre and later as a junior medic.
He was 18 months into the two-year on-the-job course at LAS’s “paramedic academy” in Fulham.
Her felt bullied and victimised after complaining to his tutors about being “stressed and abandoned” and had suffered from anxiety since his time as a call handler, Poplar coroner’s court heard last Thursday.
Coroner Mary Hassell said she was unlikely to order the NHS trust to improve its staff safeguarding to prevent future deaths, but allowed Mr Burgess’s civil partner Dave Raval a fortnight to provide further written evidence.
Mr Raval told the Standard: “The trust put forward some changes they are making. I’m not sure at the present time they’re good enough. The same perfect storm that took him over the edge could happen to others.
“The trust has policies on stress management and wellbeing but the tutor didn’t even know the policies existed. They’re good policies that have been well-written but left on a shelf getting dusty.”
After failing the re-sits, Mr Burgess messaged Mr Raval to say: “That is the end of the paramedic journey for me.”
Ms Hassell, who recorded a verdict of suicide by hanging, said it was Mr Burgess’s “long-cherished ambition” to become a paramedic
She said: “The great shame, I think, for Russell is that he was so stoical about his anxiety, and so private that he was suffering, and had been suffering for quite a long time. He tried to get some help but he was still in real difficulty.
“When he went home, it seems to me he just felt despair. It’s such a shame. This was quite clearly triggered by failing his exams.
“From what I have heard from his tutor, she expected him to pass the course and go on to succeed. He would have made a very good paramedic. He was very highly regarded at work. But the anxiety he had suffered from for a long time got the better of him.”
Laurence Cowderoy, his manager, said: “We hadn’t picked up that he had this underlying stress or anxiety. We simply had no idea that he was feeling like this.
“I think it’s a real shame that Russell didn’t at any point just drop into my office and talk to me about the paramedic academy.”
Course tutor Angela Hilliard said Mr Burgess was “easy to teach, easy to engage, happy to be there”.
She said an in impromptu meeting in June between Mr Burgess and three or four tutors, after he had sent an email two months earlier asking for help with the course and raising concerns, was “not a formal meeting”.
The discussion included a Facebook post made by another paramedic student, into which Mr Burgess had been tagged.
Ms Hilliard said: “It was a very informal environment in my opinion…. we would look at that as a chat.”
Asked by the coroner whether she could now see that the set-up of the meeting would have been “quite intimidating” to Mr Burgess, Ms Hilliard replied: “I can see that now.”
But she added: “It was a pleasant meeting. It was a nice exchange… There was a lot of compassion in that meeting for Russell… When we met Russell on June 19 we were completely convinced Russell didn’t feel unsupported.
“Russell said that when he wrote that email he was cross, and he was no longer cross.”
LAS now limits the number of re-sits to two a day and allows more course work to be done online.
Chief medical officer Dr Fenella Wrigley said after the inquest: “On behalf of London Ambulance Service I would like to offer again our deepest condolences to Russell’s husband and family. During 13 years of service working in a number of different roles, Russell became a popular and respected member of staff.
“At the time he died in July, Russell was an emergency ambulance crew staff member undertaking the necessary training required to become a paramedic.
“The clinical standards for paramedics are nationally set necessarily high to ensure they are trained to provide emergency care and urgent care that could save lives.
“Following Russell’s tragic death, it was right that we reviewed the demands placed on those studying to be a paramedic. As a result, we have made changes to help identify those who could be feeling stressed and to reduce pressure where possible in order to support individuals to achieve the necessary standards to be a paramedic.
“These include limiting the number of assessments required in the course of a day, routinely offering those who have failed assessments support and to help students prepare more easily we have moved more of the course online.
“We will also provide further support to our tutors to help recognise when students are stressed.
“Russell is missed by everyone who worked with him over the course of 13 years and once again, I offer my sympathies to his family, friends and colleagues.”
- An edited version of this story appears in tonight’s Evening Standard.
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