The life of a Wimmera paramedic: from Nhill to Horsham with a father-daughter duo

Such is the life of a regional paramedic.

Mr Webb is based out of the Nhill ambulance station, where he is the only paramedic.

"Office hours are eight till 1800, but then we're on call after that," Mr Webb said.

"It's twenty-four hours a day for me for eight days, and then I have six days off."

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Mr Webb said while such a schedule can be hit or miss for some. .

"It works for me. The core component of being available all night doesn't work for everybody," he said.

"They can be quite tense, waiting for their pager to go off, thinking it will go off.

"But it really doesn't worry me because I don't expect it to go off after hours... we're not out that often after hours - we can be, obviously - but in Nhill the workload for me is quite good."

Mr Webb said that in Nhill, ambulance officers would usually attend about fourteen jobs a week.

"Each job can be quite time consuming; usually a minimum of a three hour turnaround. You don't need many jobs to fill in your time," he said.

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Paramedics and Ambulance Community Officers (ACOs) from Nhill can be called to a multitude of locations across the Wimmera region.

"We've got a big catchment area, we go out to the South Australian border, down to Edenhope... I've even been called to Birchip a few times, or up to Hopetoun." he said.

"The closest ambulance will go; if everyone else is out on jobs, the next closest will go and it could be us."

Mr Webb has been a paramedic since 2008 and said the work is incredibly fulfilling.

"The cliche answer to the best part of the job is helping people," he said.

"I started as a volunteer in 2006... I was in a manual handling job and I was sick of it.

"I thought I wanted to do something else, so I volunteered with the ambulances as an ACO.

"I thought 'this is pretty good, I wouldn't mind doing this full-time.'"

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ACOs are vital for smaller stations such as Nhill, where there can be only one paramedic stationed.

"You need about 10 (ACOs) for it to run quite well," Mr Webb said.

"When I go out of town, there's no paramedic... we'll ask two ACOs to form a crew, to ensure the town's got some coverage and someone's there to help.

"That model works quite well."

However, a pilot program came along that Mr Webb jumped at the chance to take part in.

"The aim of it was to recruit local people to help their local town. It was the first year it came along," he said.

"It worked really well,... I was already established in Nhill, and support networks are really important in this type of job.

"You need someone to talk to."

One person who can empathise with Mr Webb is his daughter, Kelsey Kelm, a paramedic based out of Horsham.

Ms Webb told the Mail-Times she never intended on becoming a paramedic before her father became one.

"I didn't really think about it as a career when I was in year 12," Ms Kelm said.

"I knew I wanted to do something medical, but I didn't want to be a nurse."

"Dad had started as an paramedic and I went on a couple of observer shifts with another paramedic in Nhill and loved it,"

"I changed my uni preferences last minute, got in and haven't looked back."

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On December 1, Ms Kelm celebrated 10 years as a paramedic and much of that time has been spent working alongside her father.

"When Kelsey started, she started in Nhill; we worked together there," Mr Webb said.

"(Nowadays) I do get a couple of shifts in Horsham but it doesn't happen very often."

Unlike Nhill, Horsham's ambulance station is made up of full-time paramedics, working in shifts.

"Horsham is a 24-hour branch.. we run two days and two nights at a time," Ms Kelm said.

"The day shift that is 10 hours; seven until 17:00, and then there's a night shift which is 14 hours," she said.

"We're busy as hell, it's just unrealistic to be on any longer than that."

"On average we probably see about five to six jobs a day, through both the day and the night, so it could be 40 or more jobs through the week, depending."

"You quite often don't get a lot of sleep," Mr Webb added.

Although the hours are long and the work hard, both Mr Webb and Ms Kelm love what they do.

"There's quite a lot of satisfaction when you get a good result," Mr Webb said.

"When somebody's in pain, and you can actually help them because they're having a bad day; their worst day."

"I think that's the most satisfying part."

It's all in a day's work for the region's paramedics.

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