The way I see it OP is that, due to poor working conditions, continuous real-term annual wage cut, a lack of funding etc means that the ambulance service is already on its knees. It already cannot provide the service we expect from it. There are already people lying on the floor for hours with broken hips/legs/arms/spines waiting for an ambulance. People are already dying due to heart attacks and strokes not being attended to in time.
Many of the available paramedic staff and ambulances are waiting for hours (sometimes an entire shift) in an A&E queue with their patient that they can't leave until they can do a handover, but due to the A&E crisis this can sometimes take so long that crews can only attend 1 or 2 calls their entire shift.
Something has to chance, NHS staff are already leaving in droves and not being replaced due to the fact that it's no secret that the working conditions are poor, the pay is stagnant and staff get endless verbal and physical abuse from patients and members of the public alike.
Less and less people want to work in such a demanding role for the same wage they could be earning in a much easier, slow-paced, 9-5 role elsewhere. We need people to do these difficult, demanding jobs with irregular hours, unpredictability and high stress. In order to encourage people into the workforce to allow patients the correct care and safe levels of staffing without delays, the job needs to be attractive.
No one, no matter how much people try to tell us otherwise, goes to work just for fun. We are all there because we are being paid. Some of us love our jobs and enjoy turning up every morning, but I would still prefer to be at home with my family, or on a nice country walk or at the seaside. But I'm not, because I (like everyone else) needs money to live, to survive, to buy food, to pay bills, to afford a roof over my head, to clothe myself, to pay for utilities and to pay tax.
Paramedics and other NHS staff cannot be put on a pedestal as martyrs who do their job as a vocation because they want to save people. They may very well do, they may love their jobs and may have joined the profession for no other reason than to help people, but the very act of having a job is done by people because people need an income. No matter how much someone loves their job and is committed to it, if the bills keep rising, the cost of living keeps increasing and their wages keep ticking up at a pathetically small pay rise which is a real-term pay cut, eventually they will need to look for a different job to keep themselves afloat.
They already are. Thousands of them have already left, thousands more are considering it / in the process of looking for another job. These paramedics and nurses are unable to provide the level of care and satisfaction to patients that they desired to when they joined the role through NO fault of their own. It's not like they don't want to do the job, they want to be able to do the job safely, efficiently and they want to be paid fairly for it. Their responsibilities in recent years have not decreased, they have increased, as has their workload and expected hours, however their pay has been worth less and less each year.
I'm a "pen pusher" working a 9-5 at a desk and would consider my role easier than paramedics, nurses, GPs or anyone else in a medical setting and I wouldn't accept more responsibility, longer hours, unsafe working conditions and more just to see the value of my wage decreasing. I don't know why people expect those in the NHS just to accept these increasingly poor conditions, because they're in a "vocation". Love for the job, clapping on a Thursday night and appreciation doesn't pay the bills.