MORALE among Swindon's ambulance staff is at an all-time low due to soaring numbers of call-outs and a lack of resources.

Disaffected staff have become so disillusioned by the conditions they have to work under that they have set up an online blog to air their concerns to management at Great Western Ambulance Trust.

Paramedics in the town say they are overworked and understaffed with one member of staff describing the current situation as a "nightmare".

He told the Adver that call-outs have doubled in recent years and that staff have to rush from emergency to emergency to hit response targets.

The paramedic, who does not wish to be named, said: "We are having more and more work and there has been no increase in the amount of resources.

"We have still only got four ambulances in Swindon, but the increase in workload is phenomenal and there is so much staff sickness at the moment because we are not getting time off - we are being run ragged.

"In the last few years emergency calls have gone up drastically. Each shift I would say does between 12 and 14 jobs. When I started it was about five or six, maybe seven.

"We work 12-hour shifts, but often that runs over. We still provide the best care that we can, but we have to do it more quickly.

"We are rushing the patient care. We would rather spend more time on the patient rather than having to quickly do the job so the trust can achieve its response times."

He added: "We can go from traffic accidents to a suspected heart attack or to someone who has just taken an overdose and we get no down time or time off to talk to somebody.

"We work with death all the time, but what the public have got to understand is that it does affect us and we need to talk about it to other people."

Great Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust was created in April as a result of a merger between Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire ambulance services.

The new trust serves more than two million people in an area covering nearly 3,000 square miles.

The trust said the merger "would continue to retain a local focus with distinct area structures building on local pride and providing services tailored to local needs".

Yet comments from the trust's employees paint a much less rosy picture of the service being offered to patients.

One post summed up the mood among staff with complaints about managers bullying staff and ambulances that are so dirty they are criticised by homeless people.

It added: "Don't think the morale has been this low in my time in the service and can't see it getting any better.

"How about some new managers? Employing a cleaning company to come round and deep clean the buses?

"The new managers to the service visiting stations and staff? Paying bank holidays? Stop caring about the times and think about the staff for once!"

Melanie Chiswell, head of communications at the Great Western Ambulance Trust, said that managers would be visiting employees in the trust's 29 ambulance stations to listen to their concerns.

She said that the trust sent out a newsletter to its workforce shortly after the website had been set up urging them to contact them with any issues.

"We appreciate the frustration of staff, but we have got a new executive team that has only been in place for two months and we are trying to work on a number of legacy issues from the old three trusts.

"If people are posting anonymously on websites it does not enable us to answer their questions so we would urge them to contact us direct."