[deang15]

Hello I have a keen interest within medicine and I want to be a paramedic, but I would like to be one of the best there is and that is a London HEMS paramedic. what I am planning to do is;Join the navy as a medical assistant at 17 and gain 2 year experience and then transfer to become a search and rescue paramedic then gain around 2 years experience and then leave the navy and join the London ambulance service and do 2 years as a paramedic and then transfer to a HEMS paramedic. So I was wondering what qualifications will I need to become a HEMS paramedic? Also what equipment and drugs will I carry? Also what surgical procedures will I be able to perform? And how many time a day are you help people? I also understand at night you have a high performance car and I would like to know what kind of driving licence is needed and how many years experience? Also would the London ambulance service let me do experience with in Afghanistan as a MERT paramedic as I would like to bring solider back for the front line and give they the best medical care they is in the whole world? Many thanks for reading, Dean.

[medic_armadillo7]

(Original post by deang15)
Hello I have a keen interest within medicine and I want to be a paramedic, but I would like to be one of the best there is and that is a London HEMS paramedic. what I am planning to do is;Join the navy as a medical assistant at 17 and gain 2 year experience and then transfer to become a search and rescue paramedic then gain around 2 years experience and then leave the navy and join the London ambulance service and do 2 years as a paramedic and then transfer to a HEMS paramedic. So I was wondering what qualifications will I need to become a HEMS paramedic? Also what equipment and drugs will I carry? Also what surgical procedures will I be able to perform? And how many time a day are you help people? I also understand at night you have a high performance car and I would like to know what kind of driving licence is needed and how many years experience? Also would the London ambulance service let me do experience with in Afghanistan as a MERT paramedic as I would like to bring solider back for the front line and give they the best medical care they is in the whole world? Many thanks for reading, Dean.

Careful with what you refer to best, mate!! Paramedics all round do a fantastic job. There is no 'best', because they are all the same and work their hearts out to their full capacity like most other healthcare professionals. However, I understand what you are getting at and HEMS is a very high-profile and prestigious emergency care trust to work for and is not for the faint-hearted, but I know you know this. I'd say aim towards this but you'll need a lot of gritty experience before you get there, and you'll probably end up seeing working for HEMS as just another chapter in your life, by the time you've experienced all the other crazy jobs you'll carry out as a naval medic or search and rescue paramedic. To begin with, deal with the basics, get fully qualified either by becoming a student paramedic with an ambulance trust or studying paramedic science at uni. The prescription of drugs and qualification to carry out procedures is dependent on what procedures and prescriptions, you become competent in; there isn't a set path, but the more opportunities you can get. London ambulance service like any other service or institution which has student healthcare professionals under their care won't let anyone go to a country that is black listed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Afghanistan is one of them and the only way to do any training their is to be an army medic, which although would look good on your CV, has risks and is not for the faint-hearted. You may also be contracted to serve a minimum of a certain many years e.g. 5 years or 10 years, etc and serving as an army medic isn't just about heroically saving soldiers from the frontlines. You sometimes have to treat civilians, the enemy, count the dead and severely wounded. Army casualties are mainly weapon and shrapnel wounds, blunt trauma, burns and open haemorrhaging, so you've gotta be able to deal with keeping a calm head, re-assuring your patient and have a steady hand and tie of a bleeding vessel in order to save their life, when you might not have adequate supplies and you might the first one to their aid.

With regards to the high performance car, you'll get that when they think they can trust with it lol. I'd say, it would be extremely useful to learn to fly a helicopter. It's a useful skill that not every paramedic will have. ;-)

[Happy_Holidays]

(Original post by deang15)
Hello I have a keen interest within medicine and I want to be a paramedic, but I would like to be one of the best there is and that is a London HEMS paramedic. what I am planning to do is;Join the navy as a medical assistant at 17 and gain 2 year experience and then transfer to become a search and rescue paramedic then gain around 2 years experience and then leave the navy and join the London ambulance service and do 2 years as a paramedic and then transfer to a HEMS paramedic. So I was wondering what qualifications will I need to become a HEMS paramedic? Also what equipment and drugs will I carry? Also what surgical procedures will I be able to perform? And how many time a day are you help people? I also understand at night you have a high performance car and I would like to know what kind of driving licence is needed and how many years experience? Also would the London ambulance service let me do experience with in Afghanistan as a MERT paramedic as I would like to bring solider back for the front line and give they the best medical care they is in the whole world? Many thanks for reading, Dean.

Quite a list there!
I highly doubt you would be able to do all of that with only 4 years in the navy. I know very little of the navy but I would imagine, like the other forces, you will have a contracted time to be with them. Depending on your speciality and how much training they will be likely to give you this can be anything from a few years up to 10 years minimum time. When you start your navy training you'd probably be spending 1-2 years on your speciality training. They are very very unlikely to then take you on for paramedic training without a decent amount of experience under your belt, I would imagine at least 1 or 2 tours, and even then it would be highly competitive with no guarantee of ever getting on the training.

You also have to remember that being a paramedic in the forces will be very different to being a paramedic for the NHS. In the forces you'll be mostly dealing with young, fit, healthy people with traumatic injuries. In the NHS you will most be dealing with young and old people along with maternity and these will mostly be medical. You will rarely get a young, fit, healthy person as your patient.

If you then decided to leave and join LAS you would almost certainly have to do a large update on all the things you have missed as a military medic, otherwise you will likely end up totally out of your depth. LAS will also require you to hold a C1 driving licence. For getting onto HEMS they would also want a decent amount of experience and probably further education courses such as BSc minimum as well as critical care experience and qualifications. I don't know exactly what drugs and procedures you will be able to carry out. The JRCALC guidelines outline what the majority of paramedics can do/carry however by that time these will have changed. I expect the most surgical thing you will be able to do is chest decompression or needle thoracocentesis. I also believe HEMS carry doctors so will likely spend most your time assisting them. As for the number of jobs you'd probably get 2-3 a day.

I believe LAS do allow some paramedics in the TA to deploy on operations if needed (though I expect they aren't happy about it and you would need special permission).

Basically I would say you should either chose the military route or the civilian route. Decide where you would be happiest.

[jtnf]

(Original post by deang15)
Hello I have a keen interest within medicine and I want to be a paramedic, but I would like to be one of the best there is and that is a London HEMS paramedic. what I am planning to do is;Join the navy as a medical assistant at 17 and gain 2 year experience and then transfer to become a search and rescue paramedic then gain around 2 years experience and then leave the navy and join the London ambulance service and do 2 years as a paramedic and then transfer to a HEMS paramedic. So I was wondering what qualifications will I need to become a HEMS paramedic? Also what equipment and drugs will I carry? Also what surgical procedures will I be able to perform? And how many time a day are you help people? I also understand at night you have a high performance car and I would like to know what kind of driving licence is needed and how many years experience? Also would the London ambulance service let me do experience with in Afghanistan as a MERT paramedic as I would like to bring solider back for the front line and give they the best medical care they is in the whole world? Many thanks for reading, Dean.

Are you aware of how difficult it may be for you to become a medical assistant in the Navy? I frequent the Armed Forces forum and I'm under the impression that a lot of RAF and Navy hopefuls are waiting a long time to even get into training. Also, have you considered how popular becoming a SAR paramedic might be?

You only have to watch the news to see that the Armed Forces are being cut back to ridiculous numbers. True, these cuts affect mostly the Army but the RAF and Navy are being cut as well. May I ask why you're bothering to join the Navy in the first place if you're adamant you want to end up in HEMS?

By MERT do you mean the people who fly into the actual frontline and whisk people back to Bastion or do you mean the CCAST who fly to Afghanistan to pick up the injured and bring them back to Birmingham?