Emotional resilience in the ambulance service

The second academic year is well underway, and I've been out on both hospital and ambulance service placements. This year, I'm based at Wexham for my frontline ambulance placements and despite not setting foot on an ambulance for 3 months over the summer break, I feel like I've settled into the new station quickly. Ideally, students would be eased into practice, but due to the unpredictable nature of responding to 999/111 calls, we're sometimes thrown into the deep end.

During my second shift back, I was faced with a job I'll never forget: a young person made the decision to take their own life. Unfortunately, resuscitative efforts were unsuccessful and after clearing from the job, we were taken out of service to restock and debrief. As a crew, we discussed what happened and how the scene had been managed before we were joined by a Team Leader, who provided additional input and support. We were told it would be normal to continue thinking about the job and suffer problems with sleep and other aspects of life over the coming days—but that if those symptoms didn't improve within a week, additional support needed to be sought. We were also offered Trauma Risk Management training, otherwise known as TRiM training, if we felt we needed it.