Emma's Journey - Clinical Coordinator / Specialist Paramedic

Emma Strawson is a clinical coordinator and specialist paramedic.

I started my career with the ambulance service back in 2001 when I was just 21 years old. With my mum being a nurse and my father and grandfather both firemen, my family had an emergency service background. I began working as a technician for the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire ambulance service, before becoming an emergency medical technician and then a paramedic in 2004.

Whilst pregnant with my first child, I worked within the clinical governance and audit departments, completing cardiac arrest audits. With my second child, I worked on an equality and diversity project within the community, linking in with external groups and service users to find out how the service could be improved. I subsequently moved to Norfolk in 2011 and returned to frontline operations as a paramedic across Norfolk and Waveney where I remained for a further eight years.

Following a number of personal bereavements in quick succession, I took the opportunity to take a break from frontline to become a specialist clinician in hear and treat within the Emergency Clinical Advice and Triage (ECAT) team and during this time started a PGcert through EEAST to become a specialist paramedic in urgent care. I quickly developed into a team leader within ECAT providing line manager support to ECAT clinicians. I really enjoyed the fast pace of the work, the level of clinical knowledge that was needed to make quick clinically safe decisions and the variety of the patients I was talking to. On an ambulance I would see between three to four patients a day, but suddenly I was triaging upwards of 20 patients. My clinical knowledge expanded rapidly with this level of exposure, as did my understanding of the network of multidisciplinary teams and urgent care pathways we work with regionally.

For the past two years I have been working as a clinical coordinator (CCORD) within the same team. It is the CCORDs responsibility as the senior clinician in the emergency operations centre (EOC) to ensure the clinical safety of patients waiting for a resource and to reprioritise calls as necessary, while also supporting control room staff across the three emergency operation centres regionally. In addition, the CCORDs provide clinical advice via the regional advice line to support operational crews.

I have recently joined EEASTs new trainee advanced clinical practitioner pathway working towards an MSc in advanced professional practice and will be working a mixture of operational and EOC based shifts, which will utilise all of the skills that I have accumulated over the years.

I never thought I would enjoy working within the control room as I love being out delivering care to patients, but when I became a hear and treat clinician within ECAT, I discovered a whole new world in the EOC that opened my eyes to the inner workings of EEAST as a service that I had been unaware of previously.

I have faced challenges along the way, I have moved around a lot within the service which can be difficult, getting to know a new team, proving yourself, getting to know a new geographical area can be tricky. Becoming a parent while trying to maintain professional standards is definitely a challenge, but I have been really lucky over the years to have very supportive line managers that have facilitated interesting projects during periods of alternative working. This has developed my understanding of other aspects of service delivery and supported me back into the workplace after maternity leave.

Juggling a responsible job role with a masters level course, while also balancing work and home life has been the hardest challenge so far and definitely takes a huge amount of motivation.

However, deciding to become a paramedic and work for the ambulance service was the best decision I could have ever made. Even after all these years I love my job and have been lucky to have had many opportunities to develop and advance myself. There are now increasing opportunities and roles that your paramedic registration will open doors for.

Wherever I have worked within EEAST, everyone has always been welcoming, friendly and supportive. Exceptional patient care is a priority and that is evident in the way crews deliver care to patients and the feedback received from service users and it's great to be part of that. Advancing clinical practice to improve patient experience even further is finally being pushed forward in EEAST and I'm proud and excited to be involved with this developing role.