Meet the paramedic swapping hospital wards for patrols in Mali

Corporal Brownsell has swapped the NHS ambulances for armoured ambulances as she prepares to deploy to Mali in support of the UN Peacekeeping Mission

Having completed training in July of this year, the soldiers of the UK Task Group donned the famous blue UN beret on Salisbury Plain in October as they underwent final assessment.

The troops were put through a range of realistic scenarios that they may encounter in Mali while supporting the UN, from engaging with locals in a complex social landscape to conducting patrols and dealing with suspected IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices).

“I’m Corporal Brownsell and I’m a paramedic here with the task group, so I’ll be on one of our Ridgback ambulances. I’m a reservist, normally I work for in the NHS in the ambulance service down in Portsmouth but I’m now attached to the Light Dragoons for a year, ready for Mali.”

“We’ve been tested during this exercise, we have had some casualties come through to see how we respond, how our med kit works. We have also been tested on how we adapted to working as a paramedic in the field rather than in the NHS on a more comfortable ambulance.”

“During my time working on the Covid response I have been working in the ambulance and we have had quite a lot of calls of different severity. Some were people ring 111 for a bit of help and then get scaled up to an ambulance if needed, and then some people have been really poorly with it.

“Yeah, definitely, as I said before this I was working in the NHS on Covid, currently the NHS is still doing a lot more of Covid care and acute care rather than trauma. This deployment will be different for me and it is going to be good for my skills.”

“I’m quite apprehensive and not really sure what to expect. I think before I met everyone, I was more nervous about it but now I have met the team who I am working with, I am much more confident.”

“Everyone’s ready for what we think we are going come up against, we are prepared for the diarrhoea and vomiting outbreaks which are more than likely going to crop up. We have had the malaria briefs, we have trauma exercises going on, so we are all covered and as prepared as we can be.”

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