My Journey into Becoming a Newly Qualified Paramedic (Part 1) - Awaiting Results

Here is my story documenting from my last submission of my degree into becoming a baby paramedic. This series will include getting my degree, trust and local area inductions, driver training and more! It has been covid-fied (as expected) but not too much has changed, as the ambulance service has had to keep running pretty much the same throughout the pandemic.

My final deadlines were my dissertation and an essay for my leadership and management module, the 24th and 31st July respectively. These were long essays and took me months to complete, so once they were finished I had no idea what to do with myself! I worked three to four days a week and enjoyed a small reduction in covid restrictions. We were saving really hard to buy our first house, so being able to work for a couple of months was helpful for finances. I still found it really difficult as I had never had this much spare time, as I have always had work and education to contend with and once this stopped it was quite difficult to motivate myself to do anything especially with no set deadlines. Other than work, I filled my spare time with housework (exciting lol), baking, one camping trip socially distanced from friends and some exercise. Most people make the most of the free time by working and earning some money (and treating themselves) but please remember to have a break and fully chill out. Whether this is a holiday or staycation, please allow yourself some time to recover. A degree, especially the final part, is not easy and you deserve a break.

Initially we were told it would take approximately four to six weeks to get our results dependant on the module, so I was booked into a a trust induction early/mid September. Due to covid, my results due date was pushed back a week, and this was not a problem, initially. When I got my results the trust would not accept them because they had not been ratified, even though I previously checked this with the trust's recruitment team who said it was fine (firstly, how frustrating. Secondly, why would the uni even publish non-ratified results?! How ridiculous). The first date I had for my trust induction was refused, I was then booked onto one two weeks later. I went back to work for the next two weeks then two weeks later, when I should have had my ratified results, nothing was heard from my university. There was complete silence from my uni. No one got their results or heard anything at all, no indication of when we should be expecting them, not even an apology. Thankfully the trust agreed to have us on the trust induction anyway, at a reduced salary until we got our results.

My trust induction was two weeks and located two hours from my house. We actually moved out of our first (rented) home the weekend before I went away on my induction, which was a whole lot of stress on another whole lot of stress. I will discuss the trust induction process (including assessments and accommodation) in the next post (which will be quite lengthy). Thanks for reading part 1!

My Journey into Becoming a Newly Qualified Paramedic: Read the whole series here: 

Awaiting Results