A BOGGABRI paramedic has been awarded a prestigious Churchill Fellowship to study ways rural paramedics can better support the health of their communities, beyond the primary role of responding to triple-zero (000) emergencies.
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Buck Reed, who is the acting station officer at the Boggabri ambulance station, was presented with the fellowship by NSW Governor Marie Bashir at a ceremony held at NSW Government House on July 12.
The fellowship will enable Mr Reed to travel to the United States and Canada for six weeks to study similar programs that have not only involved paramedics in health awareness and prevention initiatives, but led to a greater connection between themselves and their respective communities.
Mr Reed, who joined the service six years ago and has been at Boggabri for five, is only the third NSW paramedic to receive a Churchill Fellowship since its inception in 1965.
He said the study would build on the emerging field of community paramedicine, which involved engaging paramedics with communities and building partnerships.
“Community paramedicine is a model of service delivery – it’s an extension of the traditional model of people calling triple-zero and us responding,” Mr Reed said.
“It involves a lot more engagement and partnership, to find ways of using paramedics to support the health of the community in general, in both proactive and reactive ways. For example, paramedics might get involved in a lot more health screening, or chronic disease management.
“In communities like Boggabri and in other rural areas of the state, paramedics have an enormous capacity to positively influence the health of the people we serve.
“It’s about using the existing skill set in new ways – we are not building a new kind of paramedic, but allowing existing paramedics to be more flexible in how they support the community.”
Mr Reed said the model, which was a relatively new approach, having emerged in the US and Canada about 10 years ago, would be tailored to suit each individual community with its own character and special considerations.
“It’s especially used in rural areas and recognises that each rural town is unique and has different needs, different populations, different services and different gaps in health access.”
