Are you a Community First Responder?

[SilverHairedCat]

The role of Community First Responder has come up in my area - volunteering to work for the ambulance service and be the first on scene at lots of things except RTCs and very drunk or drugged people.

I'm thinking about doing it. I'm an ex police officer so not afraid of / worried by the nature of the work, but just wondered how other people find it and how often they get called out etc.

My DBro does it, has for some time, but he’s retired. Can ask how often he’s called out if you like.

That would be lovely, thank you. I work FT (WFH) so this would be in addition to the day job.

Any information gratefully received!

I did for a while, lots of training involved, I used annual leave, plus monthly training, plus puppy walking, if your ex job you’ll know what that means.

You’ll be graded to what calls you can attend, be prepared to wait hours with the patient because you can’t leave until the ambulance arrives.

Very rewarding, you’ll also get some who are time wasters, some who should have called a lot earlier and didn’t want to bother anyone and you’ll need to make the decision to upgrade the call. You’ll almost always be first on scene.

Be prepared for various states of undress, patient dignity always a priority and you’ll be on your own sometimes with whole family members and some distressed, and you don’t get paid obviously and have to fund your fuel costs yourself.

You’ll have to carry a lot of kit! Full training given obviously.

I loved it though, only left because of the time involved.

I had to commit to so many shifts a month, can’t remember how many though!

You might spend a lot of time in care homes, which are an eye opener for sure!

Thanks @FAQs - several care homes around here, I hasn't thought of those. I'm happy to deal with families etc as I suspect that's a commonality with the Job. And yes, also wondered about the waiting for hours for an ambulance to take some of the strain.

Any idea what the minimum shifts were for you? I'm in the Civil Service these days, I think I can get x number of days off (one a month?) for formal volunteering, so that might help to satisfy the hours.

I'm in the edge of both a city and rural areas so can see this being a busy service.

I think it was a shift a week, although they classed it as on duty for a certain amount of hours, when you start you’ll be on the lower call jobs, essentially suspected heart attacks, some of our teams didn’t have jobs for months but would log on every week without fail. (City location with some rural)

You could only go up with experience. I went to quite a few falls, but they got reclassified so that stopped, I was city so thought I’d be busy but could sit for 8 hours with no calls more times than I actually was called out.

You can assist on events as well which could be fun and it’s money for the charity.

Patients were always lovely, never had any issues and it’s quite humbly sitting with someone for hours who you know is unlikely to last long, sometimes all you can do is make them comfortable and chat, you have to take a lot of details for the ambulance crew for handover, you have to check for medical history, list meds and inform if they are DNR.

I’ve just checked - min two shifts a month, plus the monthly training which was one evening a month, also you have to annual competency exams, which are another 3 days. All week days. Shifts can be any times, days, nights, weekends, you choose.

Some of the volunteers were irritating and had a bit of a god complex, I found that the hardest to deal with because I’m not very tolerate of idiots.

Heh, yes idiots tend to get short shrift from me too.

OK, that's really helpful thank you so much - I think my expectations are pretty reasonable, I'll have a chat with DH to see if he's up for it - I miss being out and about and helping people I think.

Just for a heads up, you have to go to a min number of calls before you are signed off to go out on your own and that can take months without a call, in the meantime other volunteers were being trained who had to join the list of those already trained so too many volunteers and not enough call outs/puppy walkers available, so lots of people sitting around, lots of volunteers completed the training and left for this reason, they just got fed up. This is LIVES

Each volunteer cost £500 to train so a huge amount of wasted funds it was very badly organised in that respect.

I did love it, although it might not sound like it, a bit like the Police, red tape will annoy you, the patients made it all worth while, I met some amazing people who lead fascinating lives, it reminds you to live now and not put things off.