Ambulance call handler walking 35 miles for charity

An ambulance call handler is walking 35 miles in a day to raise money for a NHS staff charity after some of his colleagues took their own lives.

Nico Attwell, 23, from Street in Somerset, will be walking from his house to the Bristol Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) in Bradley Stoke to raise money for The Ambulance Staff Charity (TASC) after losing three colleagues to suicide in recent months.

He set off at 03:00 GMT on Wednesday and is hoping to reach his destination by about 18:30. He has already raised more than £1,500 for the charity on his just-giving page.

Mr Attwell told BBC Radio Bristol's Andy Bennett he wants more ambulance service staff to know there is support available.

TASC provides a range of services to support the mental health, physical rehabilitation, and financial wellbeing of the UK's ambulance staff, paramedic students, and ambulance service volunteers.

Mr Attwell said: "I didn't hear about the charity until I was there for eight, nine months so it's [the walk] to raise awareness to people that need the help but don't know how to access it."

Ambulance call handlers deal with emergency calls from the public and make sure that the right help reaches people as soon as possible.

The information is then passed to an emergency medical dispatcher who uses a triage system to decide which staff and vehicles to dispatch.

Mr Attwell, who has worked at Ambulance EOC in Bristol for nearly two years, said a difficult part of the job is "never knowing what the outcomes are half the time".

He said: "You just make them up in your head you know - if it's a really bad one, you don't want to think of it as bad as it is."

The 23-year-old said the key is to "stay calm" on the job to ensure the caller knows they're not on their own.

He said: "At the point they're ringing 999, it's probably one of the worst days of their life.

"If you remain calm, nine times out of 10 they'll calm down and listen to you and we'll sort the situation out."

Mr Attwell is completing the 35-mile walk with a friend, and plans to meet colleagues at the Bristol Hippodrome to take on the final seven miles together.

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