New success for ECA to technician career pathway
Tuesday, 01 April, 2014
The ambulance service’s push to further career prospects for hundreds of frontline staff has achieved two major milestones.
More than 200 emergency care assistants (ECAs) have successfully passed their pre-entry exam to get onto the emergency medical technician courses starting later this year.
As well as this, the technician course itself has been validated by external examiners Edexcel and praised as being “well-researched and developed”, “student-focused” and that it equips the first students with the “skills, knowledge and confidence to work operationally at this clinical level”.
Training and Education Manager Nicola Irons was delighted with Edexcel’s feedback: “We’ve worked around the clock to ensure the course meets the very high standards we want to teach, and so we’re very pleased that these efforts have been recognised with such positive validation and also that so many ECAs are choosing to take up this fantastic training opportunity.”
Sixty staff will now take up a place on the course in 2014/15 and the training team are currently working on allocations. Courses will continue to run until all those who successfully pass the pre-entry exam have had the opportunity to achieve the programme.
Director of Service Delivery Rob Ashford added: “I’m really pleased to see so many ECAs embark on this new chapter of their working lives, and many congratulations to them. I know from my own experience they’ll need a lot of support through this new stage of learning, but it’s extremely rewarding and will fully equip them for all the new aspects of their work that being a technician will bring.”
The next round of pre-entry exams will take place in the autumn for ECAs who were unable to take the exam this time or who would like to re-sit the exam.
