Two volunteers in Cwmbran are part of a team helping to reduce pressure on the ambulance service and local hospitals.
Ruth Morgan and Chris Curtis are community welfare responders with the Welsh Ambulance Service. I met them at the office on Llantarnam Industrial Estate to find out more.
Ruth said: “They’ll allocate a patient to us. We’ll go and see the patient, do some observations and phone it through to our clinical desk and they will decide do they need an ambulance to be sped up, can the patient get to hospital another way like a family member or a taxi? The ambulance service will pay for a taxi if they need to go to A&E.
“That saves another ambulance then. Or if they don’t need to go to an A&E and are sufficiently recovered based on the observations then we can arrange a follow-up call from a GP.”
Find out more about volunteering with the Welsh Ambulance Service here.
No clinical decisions
Chris said: “[We] don’t make any clinical decisions but we’re the eyes and ears and we’re on the scene to talk to the person.”
The service was launched in 2024 with the Welsh Ambulance Service keen to recruit more volunteers (link in the comments). Each volunteer commits to eight hours a month and this can be across one or shorter shifts.
Chris said community welfare responders attended around 1,800 calls last year, leading to four in ten ambulances then allocated to more urgent calls.
Chris said: “The training is outstanding. You can’t go out unless you’ve gone through your training.
“That’s a pass or fail at the end of it but they’re very supportive. The support you get is second to none. Although you’re a volunteer, you’re not on your own.
“We stay within scope. We go, we take observations, we return those observations to a clinical who can then make an informed decision.”
Helping patients feel calm
They spoke about one job where the patient was “more poorly” than she’d explained during the call to clinical staff. Information provided by Ruth and Chris from seeing the patient led to an ambulance being prioritised and reaching her faster.
The pair have also been to calls where someone is stable but needs to go to hospital and there is a car on the drive. Following a chat with the family, a relative was able to take the patient to hospital.
Ruth said: “Because we are in uniform, the patient also calms down a little bit. They think ‘oh my goodness, someone is here and we’re being seen to’. We just do the basic stuff. We do temperature, respiratory, blood oxygen and blood pressure. We do carry a defib as well so we’re trained for that.
“Luckily we haven’t had to use it yet.
“We get really good responses from the families and the patients. We’re not paramedics, we’re not medically trained but we’re doing something to help to try and get them where they need to be. It gives them that peace of mind and takes that anxiousness down a bit.”
They sometimes use video calling on their phones so clinical staff can see and talk directly with the patient if needed.
‘Really rewarding’
Chris has worked as a logistics manager for a large haulage company over 30 years and said this volunteering had helped him in his day job. Ruth had a career with Natwest and Monmouthshire Building Society and retired two years ago.
Ruth said: “I don’t want to be sat doing nothing. I want to be out doing something in the community.
“You never know when anybody in your family may need an ambulance or yourself.
“It’s really rewarding to do this.”
Chris said: “It’s really positive because you can sit there and make sure they’re ok.
“We’ll get a steer, ‘yes, the patient can have a cup of tea if they want one’. We’ll make sure they’re comfortable or is there anyone we can phone?”
Ruth said: “If the observations are all within normal level, then that gives them peace of mind otherwise you can get more anxious and more ill through the worry of not knowing.”
Both Chris and Ruth praised the “fantastic” welcome, support and treatment they’ve received from staff in the Welsh Ambulance Service since becoming volunteers.
Ruth said: “We feel valued in what we’re doing, even though we’re not staff, we’re valued, What we’re doing is critical to the service as well. They’ve really appreciated what we’re doing. We just need more [volunteer community welfare responders].
“Some people that I’ve spoken to and told them what I do, they go ‘I don’t think I could do it’. But I didn’t think that I could do it but I pushed myself and I did it and I’m doing it.”
Chris said: “If you want something that’s a transferable skill that makes you feel really good about yourself that you’re adding value, it really is something to do. You walk away and you feel like you’ve done something because that person you’ve met, you’ve affected and helped them in their life.”
Other volunteer roles in the service include drivers who use their car to take patients to and from hospital appointments.
Welfare responders can progress to first responders where they can be called to more “complex” jobs.
Volunteer with the Welsh Ambulance Service
Visit the Welsh Ambulance Service website to read about the volunteering opportunities.