February 18th, 2025Just sayin’…

By Donna Kelly  

I think ambos are among the nicest people in the world. And I have never met one I didn’t like. (Well, there was one but there’s always one.)  

Mind you, when you do catch up it’s usually in a pretty stressful situation, but it always feels like “the adults have arrived”.  

They never run, not sure if that is part of their training, they are calm, serious but ready with a smile, and never tell you off for doing something stupid like breaking your ankle.  

So I reckon the media release that came across my desk this week is a real winner.  It’s headline was: “AUSTRALIA’S FIRST PARAMEDIC PRACTITIONER LAWS  PASS PARLIAMENT.”

Not sure why they have to do that in shouty capital letters  but lots of media releases come full of random caps. Must be something they teach in PR school.  

My training was in journalism. Old school. I had an editor who would throw my work back at me, it was bits of typed paper stapled together, a couple of paragraphs to a page, and yell “this is shit, do it again”.

I also had a sub-editor who asked me about something I had left out of the story. I told him “if in doubt, leave it out” and he yelled back “if in doubt, bloody well find out”. But I digress.  

So this media release said Paramedic Practitioners will be able to deliver urgent care and prescribe medicines while saving Victorians a trip to hospital.  That is just fantastic and makes so much sense.

Ambos do so much training but spend half their time just sitting with patients waiting for hospital beds to open up.  

The release continued: “Paramedics regularly transfer patients with serious, but not life-threatening, conditions to hospitals. With their new advanced clinical  training, Paramedic Practitioners will now be able to assess, diagnose and treat patients in the field, make clinical decisions and take pressure off our busy emergency departments.  

“The key change will allow Paramedic Practitioners to prescribe and administer scheduled medicines when treating patients, providing Victorians with immediate  treatment on the spot.”  

So the first lot of 30 is now at Monash Uni getting their free Paramedic Practitioner master’s degree, with the next cohort starting in a few weeks.  

Once they graduate, the ambos will be equipped to treat conditions that often lead to hospital visits, such as urinary catheter care, wound care and closure, minor infections, dislocations and fractures.  

Of course, only a sceptic would wonder if this could eventually lead to the closing of small regional hospitals, which generally cover this kind of thing.  

And only a sceptic would wonder if the ambos will now be really run off their feet  and become like a quasi, and free, doctor on call. Caring for people in their homes so those people can avoid paying a doctor for simple treatments.  

I must say on the face of it, this seems like a great idea. If it works.  

Oh, the ambo I didn’t like. He was no longer an ambo, having quit during Covid after being completely stressed out. Almost PTSD according to him, and I get that.  But he had taken up a job doing first aid training and he was awful. Rude, belligerent, making fun of people who did not have English as their first language.  

We also had to make noises when we sucked in our fake Ventolin, and got yelled at if we didn’t. But because I yelled when I had my fake Epipen jammed in my thigh I got in trouble.  

And when we had a short break he leaned back and asked if anyone had any pets.  He had a snake, of course. And any other animal mentioned was “better off dead”.  But apart from him, never met an ambo I didn’t like. Just sayin’.