Ken Iles, a res­cue and inten­sive care para­medic with the NSW Ambu­lance Ser­vice for 37 years, hap­pi­ly puts up his hand to say his work­ing life has been like a Boy’s Own Adven­ture – from attend­ing major dis­as­ters to being on stand­by first-aid duty for TV real­i­ty programmes.

But his major pas­sion is as a facil­i­ta­tor for CRANAplus.

“A lot of the time it’s the heli­copter crew that gets the kudos for suc­cess­ful­ly sav­ing lives after acci­dents. But if it wasn’t for the hard work of the first respon­ders, the local health work­ers, there would not be any suc­cess­es,” says Ken.

“I have enor­mous respect for rur­al and remote health work­ers. I can dis­as­so­ci­ate myself from a lot of things I have done because I arrived and then trans­ferred the patient with care to the hos­pi­tal. But I didn’t know these peo­ple.

​“These rur­al and remote nurs­es, they will know them or of them, maybe even been at their birth. How they can do their job so
well with that con­nec­tion is awe-inspiring.”

“One of the things, when we talk about dis­as­ters, are the effects on soci­ety. When you think of it, even a small inci­dent in a small town will have a sig­nif­i­cant effect on the town for years to come, for generations.”

Ken looks back at many instances where he’s been impressed with the ded­i­ca­tion of rur­al and remote health work­ers and recalls one par­tic­u­lar sto­ry of being called out on a Fri­day night to a car acci­dent in a fair­ly remote area with a small hos­pi­tal where there were a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of injuries.

“The nurs­es and the SES staff and the ambu­lance staff, they all seemed to be more ​‘tidy’ than you would expect. One was wear­ing gold ear­rings, anoth­er high heels,” Ken mused. It hap­pened to be the night of the local area ball. ​“They left the ball to come and treat these peo­ple who were injured. They put their fun aside and came to work. Self­less. That’s what they are.

“So if I can give back by talk­ing, trans­fer­ring what I have learned, I see that as a good thing. I was not greedy, not hold­ing onto my knowledge.” 

Ken, who has been facil­i­tat­ing Remote Emer­gency Care (REC), First Peo­ples’ REC, and Advanced Life Sup­port cours­es for 14 years, con­sid­ers the hands-on sta­tions to be invaluable.

“They are a ter­rif­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty to teach skills and tech­niques, and also they allow par­tic­i­pants to dis­cuss mat­ters,” he says. ​“Some­times peo­ple might be over­awed in a large group, but when they get into the small­er groups, that’s when they tend to raise con­cerns. In addi­tion, the hands-on sta­tions allow the facil­i­ta­tor to assess skills a lot better.”

“I’ve had some adven­tures,” acknowl­edges Ken, who start­ed his med­ical career in men­tal health before mov­ing to the NSW Ambu­lance Ser­vice in New­cas­tle, first as an ambu­lance offi­cer, then train­ing in res­cues and mov­ing to work on the heli­copters as an inten­sive care para­medic. (Nowa­days, the med­ical per­son on board has to be a doctor.)

Dur­ing his career, Ken was involved in res­cues fol­low­ing the New­cas­tle earth­quake in 1989 and the Thred­bo land­slide dis­as­ter in 1997. He was invit­ed to go to Israel to work with the Israeli Ambu­lance Ser­vice and trained first respon­ders fol­low­ing the tsuna­mi in Thai­land in 2004.

Ken offi­cial­ly retired near­ly four years ago, but can’t help him­self. Before COVID-19, he worked in first aid at music events and took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do stand­by first-aid work on pro­grammes such as Mas­terChef, Drunk­en His­to­ry and Mar­ried at First Sight. He is cur­rent­ly work­ing in the gas pro­duc­tion and truck­ing indus­tries under­tak­ing rapid COVID-19 anti­gen test­ing.

But work­ing on the CRANAplus remote work­shops will always be top of his list.