Trangie to begin volunteer ambulance service for community

The initiative has been re-ignited by community member Lorna Deamer who said in her experience as a registered nurse in the town, Trangie's emergency department at the hospital was the busiest they had seen in a while.

The problem, according to Ms Deamer, was that wait times for an ambulance were often an hour, sometimes more.

"Unfortunately we've had quite a lot of bad accidents in Trangie, a lot of them probably weren't preventable, but there were some that certainly could have been preventable," she said.

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The community had a running volunteer ambulance service, however interest waned about seven years ago. Ms Deamer had hoped that a new service would give the remote people of Trangie "more of a chance".

"At the end of the day its about getting someone there at that time, to do something about it. Because in that critical point of time, if someone is going to die unless they get medical treatment, anything you do is going to be better than where they were at in the first place," she said.

Ms Deamer said the volunteer paramedics would service the Trangie township including a few kilometres outside the town, and be the first on the scene of an incident to offer basic life support such as CPR and resuscitation, while NSW ambulance services dispatch from Warren or Narromine.

"We have a NSW Ambulance allocated to Trangie. Everything a Sydney ambulance would have in Surry Hills we have in our Trangie ambulance," Ms Deamer said.

So far the volunteer service has struck the interest of 13 people who are committed to the cause.

Volunteers will undertake 10 intensive days of training over five weekends provided by NSW Ambulance, followed by ongoing monthly training for 12 months to graduate with a Certificate II in Medical Service First Response.

"It's really really humbling to be part of," Ms Dearmer said.

"When you look at what you're asking people to do, you're asking people to be on call at all hours of the night, they've all got jobs, families, they all have bills that they have to pay, and there's people that turn up and actually do it."