Twitter insight to a day in the life of a Burnley paramedic

North West Ambulance Service is inviting people to follow the emergency team’s shift on the social network Twitter.

During a week-long ‘tweet-a-thon’ the trust’s online Twitter feed will focus on a different ambulance crew each day, covering the five counties which make up the region.

It wants to show the variety of incidents an emergency ambulance attends along with the other tasks they have to complete in a typical day, such as stocking their medicine bag and cleaning the vehicle.

A member of the trust’s communications team will accompany the ambulance crew as observers and tweet throughout the shift.

Derek Cartwright, the trust’s director of emergency services, said: “Newspapers and airwaves are full of the role ambulance crews play when dealing with alcohol related incidents.

“Although this is important to show, we want people to know about the other side of the service – the race to get to life threatening emergencies, the rescues and the comfort an ambulance crew can bring to patients and their relatives.

“We also want to show the human side. Each member of staff is someone’s son or daughter, mother or father.

“They have feelings and emotions like everyone else, yet they carry out acts of courage every day in what can be a demanding and stressful job.

“The day to day working life of an ambulance crew can be unpredictable, we never completely know what’s behind each 999 call until we get there, so we have no idea what we will experience on the day. However it’s sure to be informative and interesting.”

The ambulance service receives almost 3,000 emergency calls every day.

The trust said the tweets published would not identify patients and to ensure patient confidentiality is maintained it would not tweet the exact location of incidents or receiving hospitals and would not be able to follow up the condition or status of a patient.

You can follow the tweet-a-thon at www.twitter.com/nwambulance from 7.30am to 7.30pm.