Great news today - thought I would share with my PH mates :D

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

This might be a 'cool story bro' but I'm very excited, so, tough

As some of you may or may not know, I have spent the best part of the last 3 years (not to mention racking up Student Loan debts of close to thirty grand ) training as a Student Paramedic, both at University doing the degree, and with on-the-job placements.

It's been a hard slog, but I have loved every minute of it.

I don't actually graduate and finish my course until this August - however, we go through the recruitment process with the Ambulance Trusts quite early on.

Anyway, I am delighted to say that today my Trust formally offered me a position as a fully-fledged Paramedic, to start after my course finishes. To say I am happy is an understatement, so I just wanted to share some good news in amongst what can sometimes be pages of moaning on these forums!

Thanks go to some other PH'ers who know who they are, who have helped me from the beginning with advice and encouragement. I hope that now I am in this position, I might help future Students myself.

Drink!

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

Impasse said:

Got any aspirin?

Why, do you have any chest pain?!

Awww thanks guys and gals - feeling the love, it means a lot. Yep things were an absolute tt for me before I started this - but that's life, highs and lows. Prior to the conveyer belt of crap, life has been great to me, so I can't complain really overall.

And now, I have accomplished my latest goal, so life is rosy again, I am very excited, and the future looks bright.

Thanks for all your nice comments though. I'm almost welling up at the moment, soppy idiot

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

Cheers again.

To answer some questions - haha, I have read the Blood, Sweat and Tea books - great fun and surprisingly accurate. However, I won't be writing anything anytime soon - books, blogs and the like are a fast ticket to dismissal basically...the Trusts hate it, which is fair enough.

30 grands worth of student loans debts - well, I'll leave it to you to decide if that's acceptable in modern Britain or not. I blame Nick Clegg for being a turncoat! However, even more galling is that the local Health Education body decided last year to start funding the courses, due to the shortage of Paras. So if I had waited a year, I would have had no debt....c'est la vie, or something. Ah well, at least I am ahead of the new incumbents I guess!

I get cars and ambo's with flashing blue lights by about mid-September. When we start, we are put on a four-week blue-light response driving course, which is 9 to 5, 5 days a week. That's a hell of a lot of driving training, but it's done with ex Police pursuit instructors, so they must deem it necessary that we have so much training. I guess it's a pretty important part of the process, and must be done right, to encompass all different people and driving abilities. Remember that some of the graduates are in their early 20's with very little driving experience, especially fast driving and vehicle dynamics. I'm not sure how I will get on as an ex-racer and track-day instructor but I will go in with an open mind - every day is a school day, and I am sure I will learn a lot.

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

Mr GrimNasty said:

Could you have a look at my rash.

That's an abuse of an Emergency response facility, and you know it

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

Slyjoe said:

Fantastic - well done.
The cynic in me asks though, as you're doing such a useful job, why did you have to go into such a lot of debt to get there - I saw you write that this training is now funded. Such a shame on our government that you had to pay.
I hope the pay back on your part is outweighed by the job satisfaction.

Because as I said, it wasn't funded at first, but now it is.

Basically the Trusts, the Heath Service and the professional bodies who represent and register Paramedic clinicians all decided some years ago, that frontline Paramedic clinicians should be trained to a much higher standard. There are lots of reasons for that, but essentially it was to vastly improve patient outcomes in the first essential minutes of them becoming sick / suffering trauma, by providing immediate care and support that previously was only available from Doctors in a hospital environment.

Great idea of course. Except that part of that decision involved creating the University degree entry route in order to do so, which replaced the old 12-week course or whatever it was. Then in the meantime, again for many reasons, a lot of the old school started leaving, so in the last couple of years, that's created a bit of a recruitment issue.

So then last year in response to that, the regional healthcare funding bodies realised that some concerted action was needed for recruitment, thus they started funding the course.

[Ray Luxury-Yacht]

MonkeyMatt said:

I expect a full write up of the perfomance and handling charateristics of your new company wheels! Well done!

It will be a contest between the older, 55 / 56 plate Merc Sprinters, the newer 61 plate Merc Sprinters which are bigger and about a tonne heavier than the old ones, but with more power - and the RRV cars, which are Ford Mondeo Weasels with several hundred extra kilos of battery, radio gear and Paramedic bags carried in the boot....

We still favour the older Sprinters - despite them being a bit battle-weary now, many with 4 to 5 hundred thou on the clock - they still give relatively good performance, are quite forgiving handling wise, and respond quite well to being thrown about. At less than 10/10ths, they are a fairly decent place to be in with regard to being able to attend to a patient, assemble drugs and stuff, and either write on forms or enter details into the portable computers.

To drive, they are quite planted, find grip and traction that sometimes leaves me in awe on the odd occasion when I am convinced I am about to meet my maker...and still lift up their skirts and go North of 100mph when required. That said, I have also been in quite a few which have suffered a breakdown of some description or another - with possibly the worst when doing an urgent run to hospital with a very sick patient one day, when the thing suffered a catastrophic engine failure on the motorway and expired spectacularly in a huge cloud of smoke. Fortunately, we managed to get another vehicle with us quite quickly and transfer the patient successfully, who suffered no ill effects despite our setback. Closer inspection under the bonnet with the recovery driver found a rod hanging out of the side of the block.....

The new Sprinters, despite being all nice and shiny, are quite a bit different, and bigger - they have a much bigger 'box' on the back. When parked or going slowly, they are a much nicer environment to treat a patient in - better access to stuff, a nicer layout, brighter with better lighting and ventilation, more space, better stretcher and tail lift etc. However, once they are moving fast, to me they are way underdamped. They bounce about and pitch from side to side quite badly - which makes delicate work a bit more difficult, and writing near on impossible. No big deal tho, we just generally wait until we get to the other end to do the paperwork. On the other hand, they are a fair bit better on acceleration, and faster top end. Impressive for a 6-tonne plus barn door.

The cars - we just got rid of our Volvos as I joined, which seemed to be really good. The TD Fords are, however, also pretty efficient. They seem to still pick up and go amazingly, despite all the gear and two people inside - and yeah, of course they tend to understeer, but not too detrimentally. You can make some impressive progress in them if needed. So far, after a couple of years of very hard 24/7 use, they seem to be holding up very well. Also, a nice place to spend 12, 13, 14 hours inside - plenty of space, storage, good heating / AC / ventilation, comfortable, and with seats which recline to a very agreeable angle on the occasional night-time standby

Helimed 56 Eurocopter EC135.....um dunno, not been in that yet