Queensland ambulance veteran Mick Davis helping to bring the service into the future

MICK DAVIS has been on the lookout for the safety of his fellow Queenslanders since he was a little boy and is passionate about his state’s ambulance service

Queensland Ambulance Museum manger Mick Davies. Picture: Peter Cronin

IN many ways Mick Davis has been on the lookout for the safety of his fellow Queenslanders since he was a little boy.

“I started learning about first aid when I was 12 years old and in the Scouts in Rockhampton,” says Mick, who went on to become an influential veteran ambulance paramedic. “It’s just something I always had an interest in and could always see the value in.”

Throughout a distinguished career that saw him treat countless patients as an on-road paramedic, in the Air Ambulance service and as a station officer, Mick also worked hard to improve the quality of care as an educator, reformer and instructor.

Mick has watched ambulance operations in Queensland morph from separate local brigades that offered the best service they could into the amalgamated, highly professional statewide service in operation today.

And next month Central Queensland University will honour his years of service by awarding him with an honorary doctorate.

Nowadays Mick volunteers as the manager of the Queensland Ambulance Service & History to make sure people understand how far frontline paramedic clinical services have come. “The history of Queensland Ambulance is a great story,” says Mick, 71. “QAS is turning 125 next year, and part of that history is telling that story of how that evolution occurred and why it occurred, and why it was necessary. I tell that story to students and to public groups and to new graduates who have been inducted into Queensland Ambulance.”

Although the emergency vehicles, the drugs and the medical equipment have all advanced over time, CommBank’s Australian of the Day says the biggest strides in terms of public safety have been the improvements in clinical education, certification and the registration of paramedics in Australia, which is due to start in 2018.

“We still have people calling themselves paramedics who may be unqualified and may not know what they are doing,” he says. “Today you can be certain that a paramedic is a highly trained individual with the main goal of treating you the best possible way and bringing you safely to hospital.”

But Mick says the job of a paramedic doesn’t always start and end with the administration of lifesaving or stabilising medical treatment. “You’re proud of everything you do,” says Mick, “because the simple things might be having a cup of tea with an elderly woman who has lost her husband who is probably dead in the bedroom and you can’t do anything for him because he died during the night. They’re the simple things of life that happen that not many people have to consider. But they’re equally as important as treating people in a big emergency situation.”

CommBank has partnered with News Corp Australia to champion the Australian of the Day initiative which celebrates people in our neighbourhoods and communities who really make a difference to how we live and who we are. You can read all their stories at australianoftheday.com.au, where you can also nominate someone you know.