York College 'paramount' on Martyn's pathway to becoming a paramedic

Reflecting on his life and vocational aspirations while being furloughed during the Covid-19 pandemic, it was a chance remark by a friend that first ignited the idea that Martyn might like to pursue a job in the emergency healthcare profession.

“I do quite a bit of DIY and tend to injure myself a lot,” he laughed. “Because of that, I’ve become pretty good at dealing with wounds, so somebody casually said, ‘You’d be quite a good paramedic’ and that planted a seed in me. I thought why not?”

That seed grew into the roots of a clearer career pathway when Martyn attended one of our Open Events and was informed about the Access to HE Diploma in Science, where he could specialise in Biology and Chemistry.

“I spoke to somebody who would become one of my teachers and she told me the Access option was perfect for what I needed to get onto a Paramedic Science degree, which was the route I wanted to go down,” he explained. “So, as soon as I knew that, it was a case of please tell me where to sign up.”

It proved transformative advice with Martyn going on to land a degree offer at Sheffield Hallam University, where he will complete his three-year course this summer to become a newly-qualified paramedic.

Martyn, now 32, has also admitted that his journey to this point would not have been possible without the confidence York College instilled in him on his return to education, the quality of tutoring he received and the structure his fixed timetable provided in terms of being able to continue working part-time in his old job and make everything financially manageable.

“York College has been paramount in getting me where I am now,” he declared. “I couldn’t have just gone straight to uni and done the course.

“Some people did – even as school leavers – but the first unit was about pathophysiology, which was all about human systems and, if I hadn’t had the background biology knowledge from the Access course, I think I would have fallen at the first hurdle, because I’d have felt that I wasn’t prepared for it and couldn’t do it. I got Bs and Cs in the sciences at school, but the Access course gave me the confidence to believe in myself.

“It allowed me to hit the ground running at university, which I really appreciate. The teaching was outstanding, too.

“I fully respect the teachers that I had and what they did for me. They got me back into a way of learning again, because it had been well over ten years since I had done any assignments, essays or notetaking. I don’t think I’d used a pen for about five years!

“The first two or three months were a bit difficult. I didn’t know if I knew 2,500 words (let alone scientific ones) when I sat down to do my first assignment but, once I got into the routine, I found it a lot easier and, by the last two or three and my 5,000-word dissertation, I was happy with what I was producing.

“I’m really grateful for that, because it made my life much easier during the first year of university. I’d already learned how to reference and was one of only a few people who could do that, so I was actually helping others.

“The practical aspects of the Access course – with the experiments we did for Biology and Chemistry – were also helpful in terms of getting used to that hands-on work.”

Martyn, who also did Electrical Installation and Electronic Engineering at York College after leaving school in 2008, went on to stress how he was able to reach a balance between studying and continuing to work and pay the bills on his return to Campus as an adult learner.

“College had a very structured schedule of Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings, which helped me a lot when I was discussing part-time hours with my boss,” he explained.

Sacrificing a full-time wage for four years of studies was also made more justifiable by the post-graduation employment prospects.

“You can never guarantee that there will be a job at the end of it, but I know that the odds will be in my favour with this pathway,” he reasoned.

The rewarding nature of paramedic work has been a motivating factor, too.

“It’s nice to know you’ve made a difference for somebody and it’s very rewarding when you hand over a patient to the hospital and you’re thanked for all the work that you’ve done,” Martyn pointed out. “When I was considering a career as a paramedic, I looked at it this way - if I need help, I want to know that somebody is there to help me, so it’s only fair that I’m there to help somebody if they need me.

“In my old job, I was also working on the same bench doing the same thing day in, day out whereas, being a paramedic, every day there’s a different scenario. You can go from somebody who has just fallen over in the night and can’t get up to dealing with a newborn or a heart attack.

“There’s such a variety of life that you see and you learn a lot from cardiac arrests, because a lot happens in 15 minutes, and then you have a debrief.”

Unsurprisingly, significant chunks of Martyn’s degree education have been dedicated to practical learning on placement, where he has worked on ambulances in York and in hospitals at Barnsley and Chesterfield.

Experiencing a typical work pattern of four 12-hour shifts – two days and two nights – in a week, Martyn spent much of his first year observing as a crew mate.

In his second year, he was then assigned more leadership duties, assuming responsibility for questioning patients and families and performing certain advanced skills like fixing cannulas in veins.

This year, meanwhile, he has been pretty much handed full supervised control of situations, right up to the call of whether a patient should be taken to hospital or not – a decision that is then ratified or corrected, with an explanation, by Martyn’s mentor.

Other training, which he has described as “really useful”, are the simulated emergency scenarios that York College’s Media Make-up students often assist with, which help create highly realistic wounded patients and offer the opportunity to work with actual people, as opposed to mannequins, to practice conversation skills on.

Communication with families, of course, can be just as important, especially in the awful situations when they might have lost a loved one with Martyn adding: “You have to be professional while showing compassion. It’s all about finding the right balance, because it’s normally the worst day in people’s lives.”

It’s that desire to help people that also shapes Martyn’s thoughts on which direction he would like his career to follow in future years.

“I’d like to work on ambulances and you start off as a newly-qualified paramedic for two years,” he said. “After that, I’d like around another two or three years of experience before looking elsewhere.

“Paramedics are now being trained to do as much as possible to try and prevent people going to hospital, so there are off-branches, like critical care paramedics who get a lot more training and go to the heavier jobs. They also had quick response people on motorbikes before in Yorkshire.

“They’ve stopped that now but, if they reintroduced it, I’d be interested in that, too. I’m not just looking for a job - I’m looking for career progression, but you need the fundamental experience before you can start advancing.”

To learn more about our Access to HE Diploma in Science, please click here

You can also get further details about our full range of Adult and Access courses at our next Open Event on Tuesday 1st April (5.30pm-7.30pm). Register here