Emergency Care Support Worker
As an Emergency Care Support Worker (ECSW), your day will be varied and busy. You will support clinically qualified paramedics and practitioners providing high quality and effective pre-hospital clinical care to patients. This is an ideal entry level position for someone who is looking to establish a career as a paramedic. Or you may just be looking for a challenge and a career change. Whatever your reasons, as an ECSW you will be expected to support senior clinicians to deliver excellent care.
What does it take to become an ECSW?
With no two days the same, you will be responding to medical emergencies, undertaking hospital transfers, urgent hospital admissions and other allocated operational activities as required. You will be working as part of a team, responding to often very distressing and challenging situations.
Therefore, you will need to be an effective communicator, a team player and, through your caring disposition, demonstrate real sensitivity to the needs of others, helping to deal with and support people during some of the most difficult times in their lives.
What is the pathway to becoming an ECSW?
Upon starting the ECSW role, you will spend the first 13 months as an ECSW Apprentice, splitting your time between classroom-based learning with our College Partner as well as working as part of an Ambulance crew. Once you have completed your Apprenticeship with an endpoint assessment, you’ll then be working full-time as part of the ambulance crew.
What qualifications do I need?
In order to apply you will need GCSE (or equivalent) Maths and English at grade 4 (previously grade C) or above. You will ideally have a care or customer service background.
You’ll also need to hold a full manual driving licence, valid in the UK, for at least one year with no more than three penalty points, including Category 1 (C1) – allowing you to drive vehicles up to 7.5 tonnes.
Inese’s story
Inese joined SECAmb in 2016 as a 111 Health Advisor and, in the space of two years, progressed to become a coach training up new health advisors and a TriM (Trauma Risk Management) practitioner, but from early on her ultimate goal was to be out on the road. Her close links to 111 clinicians gave her the confidence to apply for an ECSW role and in summer 2018 her “dream came true” and she started in an ECSW role, based at Ashford Make Ready Centre.
“I am very proud to say that I have the best job in the world, because what can be better than helping people when they need it the most?” says Inese. “I work closely with paramedics and other clinicians providing emergency and non-emergency care in the pre-hospital setting. No day is the same – we see people at their worst and also at the happiest moments of their lives. I go everywhere with a smile and positive attitude.
“The best part of my role is making a difference, sometimes just by holding someone’s hand or talking to them. I love communicating with my patients, making them smile even when they are unwell, reassuring their upset relatives and friends and making sure we provide the best care for them.”
Inese has good advice for anyone considering a similar career path: “Don’t be afraid. Pursue your dreams, because anything is possible. If I think back 12 years ago when I first moved to the UK that I would one day be working on a frontline NHS ambulance, I would have never believed it. Yet here I am as an ECSW, starting my TAAP course in January (Trainee Associate Ambulance Practitioner – the next step towards becoming a paramedic) and working with some of the most amazing colleagues!”