Maybe an apology for the 15th's post to the CSU students.

Or maybe just a clarification,

I was an ambulance virgin once. While still working in the concrete masonry industry as a sales clerk I undertook basic training with the Tasmanian Ambulance Service to become one of their volunteers at Sorell. I had never called an ambulance in my life. Due to a congenital hip defect I had spent much time in the back of one as a teenager (now this will date me!) back in 1975, being ferried from the Royal Hobart Hospital to the family home for weekend release while I spent five months in a plaster cast from my nipples to my toes.

My volunteer unit was not running when I had finished basic training so I mostly worked, after finishing my normal work day, three night shifts a week at the Bridgewater station. This a low socio-economic, housing division area that averaged 7 call-outs a night. I worked with a single salaried officer and had to provide him with as much support as I could manage. Before midnight I would open the second vehicle and ferret around in it to familiarise myself with the contents and location because at two o'clock AM I needed to know right away where it was when we could be out in the back blocks somewhere at an MVA in the dark. I didn't always do it as best as I thought I could and I remembered these times and trained myself to do better the next time.

That's the brief on how I got started in this job. So I do know what it's like, even deciding to leave forty years of my life behind and move here to NSW to commence training to make this my career left me with even bigger security issues.

My Station Officer told me even before I got my transfer to the town that he had noted that I enjoyed working with and teaching probationers and that I wouldn't have the time to do it. Our monthly call-outs divided by the staff on duty per shift (6 usually) make us the busiest station in NSW if not the country, so I'm told.

My training officers when I was a probationer here found the time and I do too. I haven't worked with a peer officer for the last 7 months, I've had four probationers straight (one of them for two rosters), I've had a ride-a-long during those times and even put one up here in my home who was at my station while I was on holiday. I have no problem with any student as I strongly remember all of my teachers and what they did for me. My spray on the 15th was more directed at the institution and my perceived preparation of the students thinking there was a cardiac arrest, pulmonary oedema and major trauma on very corner for every shift.

There, I hope that this corrects what I did say, as I read it a day later, about students.

Be careful out there and I'll see you at the big one.

Taz