Becoming A Paramedic

What qualifications do you need to become a paramedic?

The qualifications you need to become a paramedic are changing recently. We're just on a point of a major shift of in-training within the pre-hospital and ambulance services. It used to be you joined an ambulance service direct, and you become an ambulance technician, which is a slightly lower level of skill level of a paramedic, and that's how you'd stay for two or three years. You'd wait for a paramedic course to come along, put your name forward and apply for that. Now it is moving into higher education, so people are leaving school, they are going to universities and doing a two, three, or four year degree programs to become paramedics. So I suppose the shift, the main shift, is predominately where it was very much a training environment, is now become very much an educational model of delivery.

What training will I need to become a paramedic?

The curriculum is divided into a sort of holistic health delivery, so instead of it, predominantly, in the past, it's been very much focused on certain parts of what's needed to be a Paramedic, whereas now we sort of cover a wider area. So we cover health emotion, which is, you know, people will think, "Well, how can you do health emotion in a pre-hospital environment?" but there are ways of delivering health emotion. We're the first contact for a lot of these people. So it's health emotion, social policy, so we understand why people are calling ambulances, the social needs of people. It covers legal and ethical aspects of delivery, dimensions of ambulance service delivery, so policies, and then you get on to the actual paramedic parts: a big emphasis on anatomy and physiology, on bioscience, on pharmacology, and then you get to the actual practical bits of doing the job. Now, our partners, in this case, it's London Ambulance Service, but most institutions have a partner ambulance trust. We need them to support the program. We work very much as a partnership. So the actual practical part is delivered within Ambulance Services, as well as at a university.

How long does the training take?

The program is about four years now. The paramedic part of the program, predominantly the parts, has been delivered in about 12 weeks. 12-16 weeks. In the training school, heavily theory based, then the practical elements. And then you go into hospital for a month and work under the hospital theatres under the anaesthetist. Then some A and E work, ITU work, and coronary care. That is the end of the course. The way it has shifted into higher education, that 12 weeks is now spread out over a four-year period, so it is now more of a holistic delivery system.

What skills do I need to be a paramedic?

I suppose first and foremost you need to have, you need to want to help people. You need to be a good communicator, you want to be able to help people. It's definitely not all blue lights and sirens as I know sometimes it's portrayed on the TV. Like any job there are some moments of action, but there is quite a lot of fairly routine work that we do, which is not overly taxing for us. So I think you need to be a good person, good people skills, relate to other people, want to develop as a Paramedic, and hopefully progress in the ambulance services as well. The degree programs are often set up as a Paramedic first and then go on to emergency care practitioners, or ECPs, which is an advancement of paramedics, and then hopefully into management roles within the ambulance services.

Do you need any special driving training?

At the moment you do. Our driving courses are three weeks long, and its an advanced driving course. It's based on the police 'road craft' system so its what the police use for their police drivers. We have our own driving instructors that take the students out and its a three week intensive course. It's an enjoyable course, which all students seem to enjoy. It's a different way of driving, it's safe, very safe but aggressive driving, and that's what the students enjoy.