Rockhampton Queensland Ambulance Service emergency medical Dispatcher Ruby West tells all

Ruby had no formal medical training before being taught how to take on traumatic, tense emergency calls. Now she handles one every 24 seconds.

Ruby West and her team members at Rockhampton Ambulance Station.

Emergency medical dispatchers are responsible for handling Triple-Zero calls and sending ambulances to different incidents — the first point of contact in chaotic situations.
They save lives in tense, traumatic situations with precision.

Between calls, you usually only have 24 seconds to level yourself before jumping into the next call.
Ruby West is a 24-year-old medical dispatcher who has been working with the Queensland Ambulance Service in South Rockhampton for 12 months.

Ms West said she often goes into ‘flight mode’ to deal with intense situations, sometimes the most stressful moment in a person’s life.
“I’ve had a few bad calls…it’s a funny feeling. You just go into a ‘flight mode’ - you know what you are there to do and you are there to help this patient.

“It’s not until after the call that you are like ‘oh my god — did I really just do that call?’”

As an emergency medical dispatcher, you are required to follow strict procedure and remain calm even when guiding somebody through CPR on a dying family member, assisting a parent with a sick child or sending an ambulance to a serious traffic crash.

There are 32 different protocols in the medical priority dispatch system, Ruby said, adding dispatchers have to fit every problem into one of them.

Ruby said that this was her first foray into the medical field, with all her training offered through QAS, and dealing with injured children and child callers is the most difficult part of her job.

“No matter whether the child has fallen over and skinned his knee, or whether he has drowned or what’s happened, I’ve found so far that each mother or father has always started very, very stressful.”
“So many things can go wrong, and obviously you’re not only trying to care for the child you’re also trying to show compassion to the mum.”

 

Originally published as Rockhampton Queensland Ambulance Service emergency medical Dispatcher Ruby West tells all