Former paramedic lecturer brings Australian students to Northampton

A University of Northampton paramedic science lecturer who swapped the UK for a life abroad in Australia, returned this week with some of her students for a fortnight of learning activities.

Clare Sutton, who is now based at Charles Sturt University in Bathhurst Australia, visited with 10 of her students who are here for a two week placement with the East Midlands Ambulance Service.

They started their visit in Leicester with a virtual reality experience of a road traffic accident and how to get patients out of their vehicles after a crash.

After this warm-up, they then moved onto something more like the real thing, with two staged scenarios around a car accident, where they worked together to rescue multiple patients.

The British weather came out in full force to provide them with a more gruelling situation as the students faced cold and snowy weather, helping them respect the difficult circumstances UK paramedics can work in.

They also completed several shifts where they observed other health and emergency personnel working to bolster their experience, including stints in local accident and emergency units, paediatric care and talking with University of Northampton students about advanced life support and the differences in paramedic equipment used in the UK and Australia.

Next up will be a trip down to London to see how the London Ambulance Service works.

Commenting on the trip, Andrew Mackintosh, Senior Lecturer in Paramedic Science at University of Northampton said: “Overall this has been a really fun week and it was great to see Clare again. Some of the Australian students clearly got a lot out of the visit as they commented about returning to the UK to work after they graduate.”

For more about the Paramedic Science course at University of Northampton, see our website.