Ambulance honours
A Drouin ambulance officer has been honoured in the Australia Day awards receiving the Ambulance Service Medal.
Joanne Algie said the honour was unexpected and a surprise, so much so that when she received an initial email telling her she was in line for the award she almost deleted it thinking it was probably a spam message.
Ms Algie, who lives at Koo wee rup, has been based at the Drouin ambulance station for 18 months as a team manager after previously serving at the Pakenham and Grantville stations since becoming a paramedic in 2009.
The citation highlights her “high level of patient care”, leadership through Ambulance Victoria’s Peer Support Program and her instrumental role in the service’s uniform recycling program.
“You don’t expect such things (awards) when you are doing something you love,” Ms Algie said, who stumbled into a career as a paramedic after joining a volunteer emergency response group at Lang Lang.
“The first volunteer job I got a call to was to a man in a car on the side of a road highway suffering chest pains and thought this is the type of work I want to do”.
She joined the ambulance service and is as enthusiastic about it as the day she started.
But it is not just her care for patients that earned recognition.
The citation states Ms Algie has played an integral role in the peer support program over the past 10 years helping colleagues through difficult events and experiences.
Her six-year-old Burmese Mountain Dog, Lexi, is a key part helping fellow paramedics and members of the public by assisting and comforting those devastated by tragedy.
The peer support dogs – Lexi was the second of 12 now is such roles – are “ice breakers” for other paramedics as well as community members in difficult situations, such as during and after last year’s East Gippsland bushfires, Ms Algie said.
People in those circumstances are often initially more comfortable speaking to a dog than opening up to others she said.
Further evidence of Ms Algie’s commitment to community care beyond her formal duties has been leadership of the AMBOS 4 Farmers campaign where she organised paramedics to raise money and get donations of food parcels for Gippsland farmers that had struggled with drought.
Ms Algie also has been helping to avoid many of the uniforms worn by ambulance officers going to landfill when they are due for replacement.
With the help of Rotarians from Drouin and Warragul sewn-on insignia are removed and the clothing distributed to people in need throughout Australia and many countries around the world.
More than 6000 pairs of slacks have already been recycled this way, Ms Algie proudly states.