Paul Davies has spent his working life in the air as a critical care paramedic. His mobile office is a helicopter and his job is to treat people and get them to a critical care facility.
By Ara Jansen
Paul Davies often wonders what happens to the people he delivers to the emergency departments after they’ve been transferred by RAC Rescue. Were they OK? Or did the worst happen?
Like any job, however, there are always those that stick in your mind, like the parents he rescued in a car crash. Months later at a party someone recognised him as that paramedic and the kids went out of their way to thank him for saving their parents.
Paul has spent almost two decades as a critical care paramedic working on the RAC Rescue helicopters. As part of a three-person team onboard for each mission, the helicopters are called to incidents within 200km of Perth and Bunbury. That can be everything from a road vehicle crash to lost hikers or a sailor needing to be airlifted off a tanker in turbulent seas.
Paul – known as Taffy – might be called on to hoist down into the ocean for a water rescue or down onto the side of a cliff to help an injured person back to safety. From a medical perspective, all of the medical decisions and actions in the field are his. An aircrew officer is trained to assist him if they are not working the hoist and other onboard rescue equipment, while the third crew member is the pilot.
As a kid born in Wales, Paul liked taking things apart – and at least in the early days, not being able to put them back together. He was fascinated in how things worked and he liked working with his hands.
In the late 1980s Paul took a backpacking holiday to Australia. Three years later with 120kg of luggage, his then wife, a two-year-old and about $2000 in his pocket, the Davies family left the cold of Wales and migrated to Perth.
Getting in touch with some people he’d met while travelling, he made his way into a mine site job because he knew how to fix machines thanks to his previous work in large factories that made components and some studies in robotics.
Three years later, he saw an ambulance attending an accident and thought he “might give that a go”. He started training at St John WA in 1994 and spent around a decade as an ambulance officer, working towards becoming a critical care paramedic. Eight months after the inception of the RAC Rescue helicopter, he became an airborne paramedic. Twenty years later, he’s their longest-serving and part of an elite crew of 13 critical care paramedics.
His job combines both being a paramedic and a rescue crew officer. The helicopters fit two patients, but usually only carry one. Paul is able to administer a wide range of drugs, put someone into a medically induced coma and do everything he can to keep them alive until the helicopter can get to an emergency department.
His rescue bag carries about 10kg of drugs, dressings and gear such as syringes and tubes. The helicopter is equipped with various portable medical equipment such as a blood gas analyser, defibrillator and an ultrasound as well as equipment like night vision goggles.
“In a hospital you can have a whole team of people treating a patient but in an emergency situation like the ones we find ourselves in, it’s just me,” explains Paul. “I think I have seen just about any type of accident you can imagine.”
Like many professions who operate in high-stress situations, Paul suggests critical care paramedics are likely to have a bit of a black sense of humour to help get themselves through it.
“I think you have to be strong when you are on your own. You make those critical decisions and that’s the hardest thing. You have to take a stand.
“Each of us on the RAC Rescue helicopters has something we are in charge of, and we respect that in each other. You have to be part of the team and have to be able to speak up. If you don’t, someone can die.
“Equally, I don’t think you could do the job without having that sense of humour or the ability to let off steam.”
As with most emergency medicine-related jobs, it’s one of great thrills, rush and excitement in equal measure with a heart pounding and stomach drop in the other direction. He likens the work to a duck that looks calm on the surface but is paddling like mad under the water.
“There is a lot of downtime, but then you have these periods of intense energy and activity. And they can last for quite a while. When you are on your way to a job, you never quite know what you might find. You might need to be hoisted down 50 metres because the trees are too dense to land or you can’t land close to the people you need to help.
“It’s probably one of the best jobs in the world. Some days, coming back from a job, you fly across the ocean and you see dolphins or sharks – on a nice day, it’s a pretty special vantage point of Perth.”
That downtime, however, isn’t spent sitting around watching television. There’s a constant regime of re-qualifications, currencies and checks, some of which happen weekly, some monthly and some once a year. Then there’s the training, like a recent trip to a New South Wales facility which simulates wild weather during rescues, simulated rescues or helicopter hoist training at night, which in the middle of winter isn’t a lot of fun.
Plus, originally being a Welshman, Paul reckons he is not supposed to be predisposed to loving the ocean. He has a diving ticket but didn’t learn to swim until he was 18 after almost drowning as a young kid.
As part of the job, Paul also has to keep up his own fitness. At 60, he says that’s a lot harder than it was in his 40s, but he keeps on top of it with a regular schedule that includes swimming and walking with a weighted backpack. From a mental health perspective, Paul says recognising and helping this type of stress has come a long way in 20 years and there’s so much more recognition and help available if an incident affects you.
A dad to four kids and grandad to three, Paul is indulging his love of fixing things and hating to throw anything out by renovating his house and helping fix things at his kids’ homes. When he’s not working, he also likes to go four-wheel driving with his mates and walking along the Bibbulmun Track.
His love for travel usually sends him hiking up mountains, such as Mount Kilimanjaro or the Inca Trail, followed by a good relax. Next on the list, he’s thinking the Kokoda Trail and a trip to Venezuela’s Angel Falls, the world’s tallest waterfall. Located in an isolated jungle the 1000m waterfall requires you sleep on rocky ledges while climbing it.
ED: The RAC Rescue helicopters are funded by the State Government, managed by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) and sponsored by RAC.