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| Lucie in her Wellington Free Ambulance uniform. |
By Lucie Reece, the final instalment in this three-part blog.
Sometimes what to do just stares you in the eye and dares you to try. I was stood at the coffee shop in the hospital (one of the perks of my volunteer job of driving cancer patients is I get to have a coffee treat while I wait) and a couple of ambulance officers walked past. I thought to myself, I would love to do that.
The next day as I walked the dog, an ambulance passed me and I thought. I would love to do that. And then it hit me, a eureka moment. I want to be an ambulance officer.
Now I am determined (or stubborn as my husband would say), I want to be an ambulance officer but can I in reality deal with the responsibility, the blood, the people? So, I am "trying before I buy" in a way.
As a volunteer event medic, I will experience everything that an ambulance officer will. The advantage is I can see if it’s for me without having to commit to years of study before I know. A sensible choice I feel, also my family at the moment is my priority.
What I do has to fit in with them. I researched St. John's or Wellington Free Ambulance (WFA) event medics (WFA provide a service at events- run by us volunteers. The money charged helps to keep the front line service free to everyone in the greater wellington region), St Johns wanted more of a time commitment that would not work with my family, so I decided on WFA.
WFA recruit twice a year and you go through an interview process if you are selected. For a stay at home mum, writing the CV was a small challenge:
•Current work experience: zero
•Reference from current employer: eh no.
•How do I handle work stress: hmm, no work!
So I played to my strengths. Yes, I am a stay at home mum. But I am good at time management, I can handle a stressful situation (three children gives me lots of practice!).
I am good at problem solving (I can get three children to share one toy without fighting!)
I can think outside the box.
I have handled small medical emergencies (thank you children!) and I work well under pressure.
After the interview, we had a four day training course. Learning lots of skills and it was really nice to be learning something new and exciting.
I have to remember some interesting word combinations that I now know the meaning of!
DRSABCD,PQRST,GCS,SAMPLE,LOC,AVPU,BGT
I have to do two shifts a month and at least 10 hours. There are so many activities to choose from, speedway, soccer, cricket, horse shows, flying shows, safer city on the weekend in Wellington. All will give me a taste of what life would be like if this was my career.
This is the first step on the ladder, I can do a one-year online course later this year and then that will give me a jump into the second year of a degree course to become a paramedic.
The next few years are going to be challenging, finding what fits our family is going to be my main priority and my time management skills will play a big part. What is going to be important for me is support from my husband. I want to make this journey as stress free as I can for the family but I also need to realise this is a long journey. There are going to be lots of learning hurdles that I have to jump.
It's an exciting career path, so far the shifts I have done have been very exciting. My first shift was speedway and we had no incidents. The race was fun to watch, as we were leaving speedway we heard of a priority one call nearby (this means a serious illness and ambulances have to respond very quickly to help save their life) and because we had a paramedic on board we got to respond. What was initially classed as an overdose, actually turned out to be a domestic incident and no ambulance was required. This was just a tiny taste of what ambulance crews face and I loved it!
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