Real stories from nineteen years
as a frontline paramedic. Honest reflections on ambulance service life, emergency medicine
and the people behind the blue lights.
Before You Begin
This collection is dedicated to:
- To the crewmates who worked with me over my nineteen years.
- To the EMTs and Paramedic mentors who taught me more on the road and in a crew room than any textbook ever could.
- To the control staff who somehow make sense of the chaos on the end of the telephone to give to us
- To the stations that became our second home — where the kettle was always on, the laughter came easy, and someone was always there when a shift stayed with you.
And especially to my family, who learnt, without complaint, that “I’ll be home on time” is more of a loose concept than a promise.
These essays mark the beginning of something I have been meaning to do for some time — a space to reflect on the road behind me and the lessons gathered along the way. What you’ll find here is only the start. Further pieces will follow regularly, each shaped by experience and written with honesty. If something here resonates with you, I hope you’ll return soon to continue the journey with me.
Some reflections shared here touch on the more challenging realities of ambulance service work. While written with care and respect, readers are encouraged to approach them with an awareness that certain themes may be emotionally affecting.
New to The Frontline Clinician?
I recommend beginning with The 19-Year Handover, The Queue,
What I Know, or The View From the Other Side.
The Room and the Street
Nobody tells you how fragile it is. Not really. You can read about it. You can train for it. You can sit in a classroom with a mannequin on the floor and an instructor talking you through the steps, and…
Give Us the Pavement Back
There is a moment, on every job that happens in public, when you become aware of the audience. You feel it before you see it. A change in the air around you. The sense that the pavement behind you is…
Between Amen and Goodbye
I believe in God. I say that plainly because this essay requires it. Not as a declaration or an invitation or an attempt to persuade anyone of anything. Simply as the starting point. The lens through which nineteen years of…
The Road Lets Us Through
Long before we reach the patient, the job has already begun. It starts in the seconds after the call comes through the tannoy – the address appears on the screen, the satnav wakes into life, blue lights flicker across the…
The Peelers
I was raised to believe in the police. That is worth saying at the start, because it shapes everything that follows. My earliest memory of them is the local officers from Donegall Pass Station visiting my grandparents’ house. Not for…