Tyler Redway
THE South Australian Ambulance Service (SAAS) is encouraging people to ‘Answer the Call’ as a part of the tail-end of the service’s current recruitment campaign.
‘Answer the Call’ is the SAAS’ latest volunteer recruitment drive which aims to attract new potential ambulance officers from several of the state’s regional areas.
Volunteer ambulance officer Joanne Hough started her journey with the SAAS in 2016 and has been stationed between her home town of Keith and Kingston S.E during the Christmas holidays.
Ms Hough was originally prompted to volunteer as an ambulance officer by one of her friends, which she initially denied.
Later on, Ms Hough accepted the offer due to the anxiety she had with one of her own children risking an injury.
“My youngest child was still quite small at the time so I said no and then once he got to a certain age and started having his mates over, but then I found I was always nervous because they were like what boys are typically like,” Ms Hough said.
“They were always hurting themselves and I just felt really uneasy having other people’s kids around, so when my friend asked again I thought I should actually do it because it was something I wanted to do for a while.”
Ms Hough said she liked being able to help people who were going through a tough time and her community through hardships.
“If you would compare it to what you see on TV, there are a whole bunch of these paramedic programs which are glorified, but it really is the sort of thing we do in our local community,” she said.
“We’re just there to get on with the job and you are just helping people out.”
Ms Hough said the Keith branch of the SAAS was currently facing a staff shortage due to a large number of volunteers choosing to stop work at the same time.
She said she hoped the campaign would help to boost awareness for how important it was to have volunteers in a community like Keith.
“Our local crew still doesn’t really have the numbers it requires to be able to offer a 24/7 service, which is our aim,” she said.
“We used to have a fair few more ambulance officers but we had about eight people leave all at once and all for different reasons.
“It’s a hard one to recover from when your community only has a little more than 1000 people anyway, and it takes up the best part of two years to train up another ambulance officer.”
Ms Hough said everyone was “more than welcome” to see what life as an SAAS volunteer was like and highlighted some of the qualities the service looked for in new recruits.
“They just have to be available to go on the roster once a week, go on the roster for training and be prepared to learn,” she said.
“They need to be confident and they need to have resilience because sometimes what you go to and what you see can be a little bit confronting but it doesn’t mean every single job will be that way, it just means it is possible you might see things which might prove to be a little bit difficult.
“We are always looking for people and everyone is more than welcome to come along if they are looking at joining us.”
More information about the SAAS and the ‘Answer the Call’ campaign can be found on their website or on their social media pages.
