Leading the way for ambulance women
Aotea’s Julie Sherston is being celebrated as a pathfinder for women working at Wellington Free Ambulance.
Sherston is the organisation’s longest-serving woman. She signed up as a volunteer 31 years ago, and the organisation will be honouring her work during International Women’s Day, on March 8.
Women were only welcomed to become ambulance officers in 1981, six years before Sherston joined.
She remembers the reaction of a male colleague to her. He said, ‘‘look at that little girl, she wouldn’t be able to lift anything’’.
Sherston said the comment stuck with her for a long time and only made her more determined to succeed.
‘‘We would often do things differently, learning different techniques that suited our way of working, doing more and doing better to show them it was possible and we were just as capable as they were.’’
Sherston and a colleague were the first to request maternity leave, something the organisation hadn’t dealt with before.
Women now account for 52 per cent of the frontline paramedic staff and 60 per cent of emergency medical call takers at Wellington Free Ambulance.
Sherston said it had been a privilege to be part of so many people’s lives.
‘‘As ambulance staff we get to interact with people when they are often at their lowest. People are amazing to let us, complete strangers, into their lives without a second thought.’’
Sherston’s career was fasttracked. After being accepted onto the volunteer training course, the interview panel were so impressed with her they asked Sherston to apply for a permanent role.
‘‘When I started we did most of our training on the job.
‘‘We would spend three-week blocks up in Auckland at the ambulance officer’s training school before heading back to Wellington and putting what we learnt into practice,’’ she said.
Since then, Sherston has worked as an ambulance and station officer. She trained and qualified as an intensive care paramedic, and gained the ability to work as a flight paramedic on rescue helicopters.
Sherston now trains all the new emergency medical call takers, dispatchers and clinical paramedic advisers, ensuring staff are highly skilled and qualified before they work with patients and 111 callers.