Female CEOs say ambulance service culture ‘deeply wrong’

The only two female ambulance chief executives in the country have said there is something ‘deeply wrong’ with the culture in ambulance services.

Helen Ray, the chief executive of the North East Ambulance Service Foundation Trust, said women working in the ambulance service “accept [inappropriate] banter, they accept sexualised behaviour from their male colleagues, and from patients, and they think it is okay”.

She stressed “it is absolutely not [okay]” and said women must be given “safe spaces for talking and speaking up about that”.

“There is something deeply wrong with the culture in the ambulance service”, she told the NHS Confederation’s Health and Care Women Leaders Network event on Tuesday.

Siobhan Melia, interim chief executive of South East Coast Ambulance Service, said when she joined the trust four months ago on secondment from Sussex Community FT, it felt like she had “landed on a different planet”.

Ms Melia said it was a culture “not like any other part of the NHS”.

“The gender pay gap in my organisation is significant, so we see men in senior roles are taking it upon themselves to abuse their power, [with] both female students and female lower graded staff.”

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Source: HSJ, 10 November 2022