Canadian to Australia

[Superman]

Hi all,

I am looking for information regarding Ambulance work in Australia (Queensland) - Townsville / Mackay / Cairns.

I am planning a vacation to scope out the living and working opportunities early next year and was hoping to make a few contacts and or gather some information. I'm an avid SCUBA Diver / Divemaster, love photography, hiking etc.... My other half will be joining me.

I've been studying the Matrices / Equivalencies and am sure my Current Advanced Care Paramedic license / Training / Experience would qualify my for the P4 level.

Any information sharing of contacts or recommendations would be helpful and appreciated.

Specifically:

- Is QSD Ambulance Service a good employer? Is Management supportive and progressive?

- What is working like, in places like Townsville / Mackay / Cairns? Call Volume, transport times, typical types of calls ....

- What is living in the above places like? Anything really bad / annoying?

- Are there opportunities for Flight Medicine in these areas?

- Is it easy to transfer around QSD?

- How are ambulances staffed? 1 basic 1 advanced or 2 advanced or single response units?


Cheers,

Superman
Advanced Care Paramedic

 

[Stew]

Hi Superman,
I work for QAS (Queensland Ambulance Service-I imagine your QSD is meant to read QAS) in Brisbane but spent my last high school and forst university years living in Townsville.

To quickly answer a couple of questions;

• Ambulances are generally crewed by an advanced care paramedic (P3-ACP) and a student, another P3 or an intensive care paramedic (P4-ICP). In addition to ambulances we do have 'pod' (single response) cars staffed by an ICP.
• Managerial issues (as with everywhere) vary according to who you talk to and their experiences. I've never had an issue and found management to be rather helpful with a number of issues.
• Transferring can be difficult depending where you want to go (Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast are highly sought after and thus have a fairly decent waiting list).
• There are opportunities for flight work on a number of helicopters in the places you've listed. Cairns and Townsville have a State Government rescue helicopter where Mackay has a community rescue helicopter (staffed by QAS paramedics). They perform both primary response to incidents, rescue and a large portion can be inter-facility transfer.
• I personally never had any complaints about living in Townsville apart from the lack of rain. Wet season (our summer) can get pretty wet when it wants to (cyclones and what not) but it's not often. There is a large army and airforce base in Townsville as well as being a center for fly in fly out miners.
• If I'm correct our current manager of clinical standards is a former Canadian Paramedic (always promising).

Having never had anything to do with equivalency of competencies I'm not sure who the best person to talk to would be. In the recruiting section of the website there should be a contact number or email for international recruiting.

Hopefully that helps, give me a shout if it doesn't/you have any more questions.

 

[MrBrown]

QAS seems like a pretty awesome setup and that Dr Rashford looks like the dream medical director *swoon lol

So bugger them I say, come to New Zealand!

Either way bring Brown some maple syrup for his pancakes, stat eh!

 

[Stew]

Brown! B)

QAS has been pretty sweet to work for. Dr Rashford (Steve) was appointed prior to when I started working for them so the changes he's implemented have been the norm for me. Introduction and filtering down of pharmacological interventions and skills from intensive care to advanced care have been great, not only for the paramedics but in my experience also improving patient outcome.

In our region (Brisbane) we see Dr Rashford cruising around most days and he is more than happy to jump onto a job if we need a hand. We also have our second pre-hospital registrar (I think final year emergency resident equivilent) cruising around town jumping onto jobs as required.