I am a Paramedic Practitioner, writer and father of a young family living in the UK.
Having been involved with urgent and emergency care for almost two decades, the last five of which have been full time in general practice, I wanted to share my experiences.
Most of what I’ve seen and done is the ‘bread and butter of the job’. The day to day stuff that takes you from hour to hour, shift to shift. Old people falling, stuck on the floor at 3 am. Kids with sore throats. Minor wounds. Mental Health. Animal bites (yes, humans are animals too). Substance abuse. Violence. Lots of violence. Calling 999 because someone can’t get a GP appointment. Drunk teenage girls throwing up on the cobbles. Breathing problems. Chest pains. Cardiac arrest. Hoax calls. The list goes on.
Then there’s the social aspect of the job. Loneliness. Poverty. Hoarding. Homelessness. Social issues are massive in the UK, and cataclysmic social disasters are increasing year on year.
And then there’s the stuff you see on TV. Road Traffic Collisions (RTCs), poisonings, gun shot wounds, stabbings, drownings, suicides, murder, rape. Abductions, armed robberies and prison breaks. Organised Crime. Sieges, explosions, terrorism and train crashes. This stuff happens, and the majority of people who’ve worked on a front-line ambulance can tick these off their bucket list; should such a thing exist.
So how on earth did I ever get into such a thing? What sort of person would choose this as their career? Now that’s a very good question. The ambulance service attracts all manner of people. I think the one thing that they have in common is that they want to make a difference. They want to help people. I certainly did. I’ve helped god knows how many people in al sorts of situations over the past twenty year Now, all this time later, hmmm, it’s hard to tell. The lines between caring for myself and caring for others has become thicker. This type of job definitely has a shelf life.
Having left school with a single GCSE in maths, and then drifted from one miserable job to another, I ended up working in sales. This seemed fun for a few years, I was single, living in Brighton and enjoyed the lifestyle. However, like most things, I got bored of it. I went back to full time education and then joined the ambulance services working on Patient Transport services (PTS). This is taking non-urgent patients to their hospital appointments, and then home again and also low acuity inter-hospital transfers. It is in my opinion (having seen and been involved in the training and education of paramedics), the most solid route into the ambulance service. It is where my story began, so I think it is only fitting to start this blog at that point too.
Growing Up In The Ambulance Service 