How do I become … a paramedic
On a zebra crossing one November night, Lynsey Grant saved my mother’s life. The paramedic was on secondment with the London Air Ambulance when she was dispatched across London to treat a woman who had been run over while crossing the road on her way home from work. The casualty was not expected to survive. Eighteen months on, thanks to the skills of Grant and her team she is home from hospital – disabled but, against all the odds, alive. It’s a night Grant remembers with emotion, despite the myriad patients she has helped since then. “You can deal with really traumatic cases, but sometimes the things that upset you aren’t what you expect – it might be an elderly lady who has been assaulted or someone who is so grateful it really moves you,” she says. “When you get to the scene you are in clinical mode and don’t have time to think too much about the person lying there, but then later you might see their shoes on the road or a handbag with a make-up case inside and it really gets you...