Location: Various throughout Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Hampshire
Hours: Full time: 37.5 hours per week (part-time hours may be available on completion of training). Bank (zero hours) agreements may be available
Annual leave: Minimum 27 days plus statutory public holidays, pro rata for part-time staff
Shift Pattern: Rota covering 24 hours, 7 days a week – shift patterns vary by area
As a paramedic you will be one of the first healthcare professionals to arrive at a range of emergency and non-emergency situations. You will be the senior member of a two-person ambulance crew, with an emergency care assistant to support you. However, you might work on your own, using a rapid response vehicle to reach your patients. When you arrive at the scene of an emergency, you will assess the patient’s condition and take potentially lifesaving decisions about any treatment needed before the patient is transferred to hospital. You will then start giving the treatment, with the assistance of your crewmate.
In non-life-threatening situations, you’ll also have to use your professional judgment to make key clinical decisions. You will be trained to drive what is in effect a mobile emergency clinic and to resuscitate and / or stabilise patients using sophisticated techniques, equipment and drugs. You might be called out to someone who has fallen from scaffolding, for example, or an elderly person with a suspected stroke. Based at a local ambulance station along with other emergency crews, you will work shifts, including evenings and weekends, going out in all weathers at all hours of the night or day.
You will work closely with doctors and nurses in hospital emergency departments, briefing them as you hand your patient over to their care. As well as contact with your patients, you will also deal with patients’ relatives and members of the public, some of whom might be hysterical or aggressive. You will also often work alongside the police and fire brigade. Please note that we are currently unable to recruit external student paramedics. We work in partnership with Portsmouth, Bournemouth and Oxford Brooks Universities to support the development of our staff through internal schemes and programmes.