A new adventure

Third year came around in the blink of an eye. Before I knew it, the Christmas holidays were here and, in the new year, the university had put on a recruitment day for prospective ambulance services to come in to talk to students. Over the two recruitment days, I heard pitches from most ambulance trusts across the UK and Wales. The Trust I carried out my placement with was North West Ambulance Service (NWAS), with other contenders being East Midlands and Yorkshire. Following this, I completed an elective placement with London Ambulance Service (LAS) (Sofield, 2023). While this was with advanced paramedic practitioners in urgent care, it gave me a taste of London Ambulance Service (LAS) as a whole, which sparked an interest in potentially moving and working for them in the future.

Throughout March and April, both my husband and I discussed which service we thought would best suit us. For three of the four trusts, we could stay at our home in Manchester, and I would commute, depending on base station allocation. However, after the experience I had during my elective placement, I experienced what a future career could look like and I knew my heart lay with LAS. April saw NQP applications open for all four trusts. I was hesitant to apply solely for LAS; we have no friends or family in the south, and it would mean uprooting both of our lives to the capital and starting over again. I applied for the LAS in mid-April; an interview was offered very quickly and here started the process of moving to London. On the run up to the interview, I went through a gamut of feelings. Part of this was fear about finishing university, becoming a paramedic, and making the move south. On the flip side, I was excited to qualify, and to start work in a role I had wanted since being a teenager.