Highway’s Pink Team rushes to the rescue

LISA Gangabishun and Angela Craig, ER24 paramedics, have been serving the Highway area as a team for over two years.

The bubbly duo, fondly known as the Pink Team, recently spread some light on the life of a paramedic.

According to Gangabishun, who has been a paramedic for 19 years, its is a highly rewarding career, but can be physically and emotionally draining. “The most difficult aspect of my job is responding to incidents that involve children and drunk drivers. You sometimes do feel conflicted, so I need to remind myself that I took an oath to treat the patient regardless of the circumstances,” said Gangabishun.

Craig also reported that they have to deal with trauma every day, and are constantly putting their own lives at risk. “It is a life and death situation. When responding to an emergency we are in danger of having an accident, and we never know what situation we are responding to. An armed suspect could still be at the accident scene or the suspect could be our patient,” said Craig.

“All of this becomes worth it when you save a person’s life and they approach you afterwards and sincerely thank you,” said Gangabishun. Paramedics are also obligated to attend counselling sessions to deal with the trauma associated with their job, but they also talk to other paramedics about their experiences.

Other aspects that make a paramedic’s job difficult include traffic and language barriers. In remote areas the paramedics often need to hike with their heavy equipment in order to reach and treat the patient.

“People need to realise that our ambulances don’t have wings. We do our best to respond to an incident as soon as possible. To ensure that we respond as soon as humanly possible people need to provide us with as much information and landmarks as possible,” Gangabishun.