‘It’s not my job to judge, it’s my job to help’

Jaye Newton is often the last chance for those on the edge of life and death. As one of a handful of paramedics in the ambulance service’s High Acuity Response Unit, his attitude is simple: To give every patient one more chance at life, regardless of if t

Bulletin AS the ambulance tore down the M1, lights and sirens screaming, Jaye Newton worked on the body in the back.

Quietly, calmly, yet fiercely determined, he fought to keep the light of life alive in the male patient.

With every second critical, Jaye didn’t think about the scene he had just witnessed. Called to Helensvale McDonald’s on a sunny, September morning in 2015, Jaye immediately assessed the scene. His priority was to stabilise this patient – a patient whose wife, Karina Lock, now lay dead on the ground beside him.

First the patient had killed this mother of four, the mother of his children, then he had turned the gun on himself with a crowd of customers, including kids, witnessing the horror unfold. And now Jaye’s job was to save the shooter, who was the victim’s estranged husband.

There was zero time to debate the moral and ethical ramifications … and even if there was, it would not matter. At the heart of Jaye’s job, at the heart of his faith, lies his core philosophy: Every life is a life.

“It’s not my job to judge, it’s my job to help,” he says.

“My job is to give every patient one more chance at life. I’m their last chance for a chance. A chance to go on living a good life or a chance to turn their life around.

“It’s up to them what they do, but without that last chance there is no chance.”

In fact, hope and faith are the fuel that give Jaye the mental energy to face the trauma of life and death, day in and day out.

As one of just 14 in the Queensland Ambulance Service’s specialist High Acuity Response Unit, Jaye is considered arguably one of the most technically efficient paramedics in the world.

The expert team of frontline, tertiary trained critical care workers effectively provides a mobile emergency department sent to shootings, stabbings, drownings and extreme trauma across southeast Queensland, with a team of six based on the Gold Coast and a team of eight in Brisbane.

“The things I’ve seen … I can’t put it into words and you wouldn’t want me to,” says the father of three.

“There are deep, dark corners to this city that no one would dream of. Drugs, mental health issues, domestic violence … I couldn’t even imagine it if I

hadn’t seen it .

“That job at Helensvale McDonalds, I think that was the last of my blinkers gone. My eyes just opened to the problems that we have, especially domestic violence. It took a long time for me to process that.

“My family and I used to live down the road from there, in Pacific Pines. It was just too close to home. It was the collision of two worlds – the Coast we know, families and theme parks; and the Coast that I’ve seen, violence and death.

“But you know, in the moment, when you’re dealing with it, when I was working on the male patient in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, all that thinking is in the future. You have one job and that’s to save a life.

“Whether that life is worth saving, that’s for someone else to answer. For me, it always is and always will be. Even if for nothing else than the chance to change, to atone.

“In that case, the patient lost that chance. We got him to hospital but he later died. But I know we did everything we could to save him. Every life is a life.”

Still, a constant diet of death and trauma is far beyond the “bad day at the office’’ the rest of us might experience.

Jaye acknowledges that, even with the QAS doing its utmost to provide support and respite for its crews, it can become too much for some.

Yet after 18 years he’s still here, specialising in the most extreme cases.

Jaye says it all comes back to faith and hope. “Every case, you have the hope that you’ll save a life – and with this unit, we really have very good outcomes,” he says.

“There are so many jobs that I go to now that, five years ago, you were dead, no chance. Now, chances are you’ll live.

“But I also just have hope in humanity. I’ve seen some of the worst cases of mental illness, of mental distress, of drug abuse, and I’ve seen those people survive and seek help and recover.

“I was born into a Christian family and my faith is very real and strong. So I really do have the faith that whatever I’m going to, whatever I see, whatever I do … it’s all working out according to a plan.

“Not my plan, certainly. “Probably one of the scariest aspects of this job is just how life can turn so instantly. One bad decision, one moment of inattention and your whole world is changed forever, or over completely. When you see how close we are to the edge every day, it can tempt you to believe in chaos.

“My faith keeps me steady.” That’s not to say that what Jaye has seen does not affect how he acts.

Just ask his children. “Yeah, I guess I am a bit of a helicopter parent,” he laughs.

“I don’t let my children play in the front yard and we don’t have a pool … yet.

“I’m waiting until they’re all strong swimmers. And motorcycles? That is never going to happen.

“I know from my job that you can never control all of the risks in life, but you can reduce them.”

While every day brings fresh trauma, from violent crime to medical emergencies, Jaye says he walks a fine line between suppressing his emotions and retaining his humanity.

He says the worst jobs are those involving children, an already awful aspect of his work which only became harder after becoming a father.

“Drownings are the job we all dread. It doesn’t get more tragic. An innocent child gone and a family whose world was just shattered. There was no violence, no ‘guilty’ party, just absolute desperation.

“Dealing with the family is just gut-wrenching. In some aspects, we have to suppress our emotions because we can’t be feeling all of the feelings and still deal with a crisis. Plus, there is so much we see, you just can’t unpack it all.

“But you have to keep your humanity too. Yes, I’m there as a member of the QAS because a child has drowned. But I need to be there as a father too. I need to let that family feel my empathy and heartbreak, they need to know that we care. At that stage, that really is all we can do.”

Jaye says becoming a paramedic was more of a calling than a career choice.

In fact, it wasn’t even his first career. Before joining the QAS he was a civil engineer for five years, working for the main roads department.

But he says he kept being called to serve others, first as a surf lifesaver and then eventually as a paramedic.

“I think one of the most formative experiences as a teen was when my best friend, Robbie Gatenby, died,” says Jaye, of the 15-year-old teen who drowned after being struck on the head during a