How Did Co-Responding Affect Your Night Shifts?

[ChalkAndSheez]

I would say the majority of wholetime firefighters currently (if you're in a brigade with beds) get a decent amount of sleep on nights, or at least some nights.

How did co-responding affect your downtime on night shifts?

[Becile]

I think this really depends on where geographically you are with your ambulance service, for example we had a number of stations who were up most of the night on calls, and others less so.

I also have colleagues who don't get much downtime due to location and call type -  regardless of medical element.

I will not comment on the politics, what I will say is that there are members of the public who are still with us, without our intervention and actions this would have been different. 

[Cardiff_Fire]

I was on a quiet station when I took part in the EMR trial, more often than not I got (most of) a night in bed.  Adding EMR saw us out maybe once a tour extra, didn't really register as all that much busier. But as Becile says just depends on the Geography.

Also, second hand info but I was told that in our area we were listed by Ambo the same as a Community First Responder asset (the volunteers) so if one of them was closer and on duty they would pick up the call rather than us, probably contributed to a lack of calls as I know there were a fair few in the town my old station was in.

[Dyson]

Haha i don't think not getting a night in bed is gonna fly as reason to resist!! 

[Carl]

We were constantly busy with them in Manchester and there wasn't really a peak time. In relation to night shifts though, we tended to get them around 5am - 6am when Ethel or George had woken up at their usual time and found the other half had passed in the night. Obviously a call to 999 got us on our way, but more often that not, unless we caught them early, they had passed hours previously. 

[Matt]

The early morning calls are similar around here with more of a weekend strangely than over the weekday period.