Excellence in Staff Development Residential EMT Programme

Hato Hone St John

Team: Peter Davis, Andrew Graham, Johnny Mulheron

Historically the supply of paid ambulance personnel has been greater than demand within Hato Hone St John, enabled by a stable supply of suitably qualified volunteers and an excess of Paramedic graduates from universities. As part of a project to double crew all emergency ambulances, from 2016 – 2021 Hato Hone St John increased the number of paid ambulance personnel from 1,161 to 1,678 which both consumed the available volunteer workforce, and created a workforce deficit of approximately 10.4% (or 11.4% when only considering the second crew component of Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and Emergency Medical Assistant (EMA) positions).

At the emergence of COVID-19, Hato Hone St John anticipated a significant impact on our workforce, preparing for large scale loss of staff through direct effect of the virus. While these concerns were not fully realised, the wider impacts of COVID-19 were. These included a higher workload and associated increase of staff fatigue. When the requirements of Paramedic Registration and workforce attrition were coupled with the gaps created in our workforce by unfilled newly funded roles, the need for improved workforce pipeline was solidified. We elected to look within the organisation and create a vocational pathway to complement the existing academic pathways from tertiary providers.

By introducing a full-time Residential Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) programme, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hato Hone St John was able to increase the availability of suitably qualified ambulance personnel. These cohorts targeted the recruitment of existing volunteer personnel and members of the public who were interested in working on frontline emergency ambulances. The Residential EMT Programme was launched in September 2021 with an initial 69 new recruits over four cohorts. This was followed in March 2022 with a further 124 new recruits over four cohorts. As of February 2023, a total of 163 new EMTs had graduated the Residential EMT Programme, reducing the second crew vacancy across Hato Hone St John to 3.2%.

Currently, 9.9% of all the paid frontline ambulance roles at Hato Hone St John (across all practice levels) have originated from the Residential EMT Programme, which is an outstanding achievement for those involved in bringing this project to fruition. Not only did the Residential EMT Programme exceed expectations for the numbers of successful graduates, but it has become an integral part of our range of initiatives to ‘turn-the-tide’ of wider workforce challenges.