‘Fitting in’ as an NQP

The single greatest piece of career advice I ever received was in my 2nd year at university when I asked a HEMS paramedic what qualities the air ambulance services look for in their clinicians, and what in her view made a ‘good’ paramedic? Ready for a list of qualifications, publications, years of experience, and titles, I was stunned when she said simply: ‘Don't be a d**k’.

I never began to appreciate the intricacies of this until I actually started working in the service as an newly qualified paramedic (NQP) all of 6 months ago, and I am still trying to fully decipher it to this day. At the crux of it is a question I ask myself on a daily basis that is an inherent part of human nature: ‘how do I fit in?’. While there are no definitive answers to this, here are some things that I feel have helped me out along the way and made my first few months as an NQP a bit easier.