A newly qualified paramedic has had to learn to speak slowly so patients can understand her Irish accent.
Georgina Cregg, 31, left her home town of Galway on Ireland’s west coast to tackle a ground-breaking Swansea University course and is now a fully-fledged paramedic based at Llanelli Ambulance Station.
She said: “I had to learn to speak really slowly when I first arrived as no one seemed to be able to understand a word I was saying! But I’ve settled in now and really love the job.
“I married a Swansea boy and I’m really settled here in South Wales now and I love my new job.”
The Welsh Ambulance Service entered into a pioneering partnership with Swansea University two years ago and now the first crop of 30 graduates of the new paramedic course, including Georgina, are tending to the people of Wales.
Georgina is delighted she is working as a relief paramedic out of Llanelli and says she finds the job really rewarding.
She said: “I tried in Ireland but you have to wait years before you’d even be considered. I spotted the Swansea course on the internet and applied. Initially I wasn’t successful but then got a call about a week before the course was due to start and the rest, as they say, is history.
“The course was excellent and, as we were the first students to tackle it, perhaps there was even more pressure to succeed. It was really hard work but also very enjoyable. We were out on placement a great deal of the time which was brilliant and gave us a real insight into the job.”
And once qualified Georgina began life working out of Llanelli Ambulance Station where she had to learn to hit the ground running.
She said: “Initially you work alongside an experienced paramedic but then you are out on your own working with an ambulance technician. It’s only then it hits you that you are in charge and the buck stops with you.
“Unfortunately, I have had a run of serious road traffic collisions to deal with, a few of which have had the added pressure of drivers or passengers being trapped in vehicles.
“It’s nerve-wracking as you need to get those life and death decisions right. It’s a great feeling knowing you have perhaps saved someone’s life as a result of the skills you learned through the university course.
“However, the job isn’t all about serious injuries and horrendous accidents as there are also the problematic social issues we are called to deal with. Things such as treating elderly neglected patients that leaves you wondering how on earth they were ever so neglected in the first place.
“And I have had to deal with a ridiculous number of very drunk, very young teenagers. You can’t help but wonder how on earth they ever got in such a state and why there wasn’t more control.
“However, before getting a place on the course at Swansea University I was a social care worker back home in Ireland so perhaps I’m more questioning than some. What I do know is, I dearly love my job as a paramedic and I’m so glad to be working here in South Wales.”
Andy Williams, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s Senior Education and Development Lead, has played a major role in bringing the students, including Georgina, through and he said: “We have developed a good working relationship with Swansea University.
“The programme is designed so students spend half of their time in the University, learning most of the theoretical elements of their role. The rest of the time is split between the Ambulance Training College, where they learn their practical skills and the theory to support them, and on practice placements in the operational setting.
“Each student is allocated a Practice Placement Educator, who has been selected to support and further develop the skills learned in the classroom when they go out on operational duties, either as the third person in an emergency ambulance or as the second in a rapid response vehicle.
“In total 44 finished the University course and we’ve employed 30 of them as well as two others, from John Moores University in Liverpool and South Central Health Centre at Oxford Brookes University.”
The graduates come out with Diplomas in Paramedic Science and Andy Williams added: “It is an on-going process and we are learning from how it works and the course is evolving all the time.
“The graduates are now out on the road as paramedics, and it will be interesting for us to see how well they adjust – it will be a challenging time for them as well as they settle into their new role.”
Swansea University is also delighted with the success of the course with a further 51 students currently on their second and final year with another 46 first years beginning the course last September.
Mike McIvor, Lecturer in Emergency, Unscheduled and Pre Hospital Care at the University of Swansea, has been involved in the training of many of those now in senior positions in the Welsh Ambulance Service, including Andrew Jenkins, Wales’s first Consultant Paramedic and Andy Williams, both of whom have a B Sc in Pre-Hospital Care.
He said: “Swansea University has been involved in the field of unscheduled and emergency care for many years and the link with the Welsh Ambulance Service also goes back well over 10 years.
“It’s fantastic that we have managed to provide a brand new intake of paramedics for Wales through this course. It’s a first for Wales, a good collaboration with an ambulance service in the UK and this does seem to be the way the College of Paramedics wants to take paramedic education forward.
“They spend 45 weeks in the year on the course, half of that time here with us and the other half out on the road with ambulance crews or accompanying a paramedic in a rapid response vehicle.
“We do work closely with Andy Williams and his colleagues both here at the University and at the National Ambulance Training College at Cefn Coed in Swansea and they’re pivotal in ensuring that particular skills are developed and assessed.
“The students are educated so that they know how to do something as well as having the underpinning knowledge and the skill to seek out evidence for practice. Paramedic students study a range of subjects including sociology, psychology, social policy and law as well as biological science and clinical skills.
“It is a challenging profession because they’re out there in a very high pressure situation with the responsibility for patient care – I take my hat off to the staff who are out there on a daily basis.
“We’re doing our best to make sure they have a range of additional underpinning knowledge, skills in reflection and people skills to help them in their role.”
