Emergency Medical Paramedic

Welcome to Emergency Medical Paramedic… I’m currently a practicing paramedic in Australia with over 10 years experience working in two of our largest cities and a variety of remote outback country regions all over Australia.

Paramedics provide both emergency and not so urgent pre-hospital care to people within a wide scope of environments from houses, parks, public places through to beaches, mountains and the wilderness. Wherever a person can get injured or become unwell, paramedics are available to provide a high level of pre-hospital clinical care.

What emergency help can paramedics provide? Paramedics are able to provide many lifesaving procedures and are experts in the area of airway management, breathing and circulation support (the ABCs of Medicine). Paramedics are able to provide a range of advanced clinical skills such as: intubation, emergency cricothyroidotomy, thoracentesis to treat a tension pneumothorax, defibrillation, cannulation, fracture management and analgesia. One of the most important and most regulalarly used of these skills is analgesia – I may not save very often, but every day, as a good paramedic, I provide good analgesia and make a person more comfortable throughout a painful experience.

On top of all of these skills, paramedics are capable of performing them in a very dynamic and often both dangerous and difficult environment far removed from the sterile world of hospitals and aneasthetic bays. These means that paramedics must know how to do their job so well that they can litterally do them anywhere. It also means that the most important skill that a paramedic can develop is good scene management, which means that you and everyone around you doesn’t end up in a worse situation at the scene of an accident.

Where have I worked as a paramedic? I’ve worked in two of Australia’s largest cities and many rural locations. Some towns haven’t had hospitals, or doctors… some still utilise single paramedics to respond to medical emergencies. I’m employed as a qualified ambulance paramedic with tertiary qualification in paramedics, nursing, and emergency management and these are some of my Australian Paramedic stories.

Over the years, I have often thought about how real life can be so much stranger than fiction… all the ambulance paramedic or emergency medical stories that I’ve accumulated here are real, but specific identifiable names and locations of events have either been changed or removed to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality. The paramedic stories told here, are intended for both entertainment and educational purposes. Some of the ambulance paramedic stories are humorous, some are serious and I hope will allow you to learn from my experiences and my mistakes.

It goes without saying that any paramedic or medical recommendations, or clinical advice, should only be considered as an adjunct to your regular paramedic training, and so long as it does not contradict your own Ambulance Service’s protocols, pharmacologies, procedures or clinical practice guidelines.

These are my paramedic stories…