In our increasingly complex healthcare system, it takes a wide range of clinical and non-clinical roles to deliver a safe, effective ambulance service.
One cohort of roles which continues to grow at EMAS are our nursing colleagues. We now have over 70 registered nurses working across different patient and non-patient facing roles in our organisation.
Director of Quality, Keeley Sheldon, a nurse by profession, has created an internal professional forum for nurses at EMAS.
Keeley said: "this a forum to support one another, acknowledge our positive impact and reflect on challenges and future innovations and opportunities for nursing at EMAS.
“Colleagues are rightly proud of their nursing backgrounds, representing a profession that is highly skilled, dedicated, person centred and compassionate. Thank you for everything you do on a daily basis.”
Some of the colleagues came forward to share their stories of their careers and their current roles to help educate how nurses make an important contribution to our service.
We currently have vacancies available for paramedics and nurses as Clinical Advisors in our clinical hub, based in our Emergency Operations Centres (EOC) and as Specialist Practitioners.
Jake Byatt - Student Technician
Happy International Nurses Day!
My name is Jake, and I’m a Registered Adult Nurse currently working with East Midlands Ambulance Service as a Student Technician on the FREUC pathway.
My journey into healthcare began with a BSc (Hons) in Adult Nursing from the University of Lincoln, qualifying in 2022. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to work across a range of settings — starting in HMP Lincoln as a Practice Nurse, moving to a Neonatal Unit, and more recently transitioning into the ambulance service in November 2023.
When the chance came up to join EMAS as a Student Technician, I saw it as a way to broaden my experience and contribute in a different, yet equally vital, way. My long-term goal is to become dual-registered — combining the knowledge and skills of both nursing and paramedicine to better serve our community. I'm currently working toward completing my FREUC 5 and progressing toward newly qualified technician status.
While I can't currently perform practical nursing skills in this role, such as cannulation, catherisation, bloods and more, my nursing background has been incredibly valuable. The clinical reasoning, communication, and medical knowledge I gained from my training helps me every day on the road — from interpreting patient presentations and clinical observations to understanding care pathways and helping to make clinical decisions.
I still pick up nursing shifts with my local trust when I can, and I feel fortunate to be able to contribute in both settings. I genuinely enjoy both roles, and I hope to one day bring them even closer together — whether that’s through an Ambulance Nurse role, becoming a Paramedic, or pursuing further study.
To all my fellow nurses: thank you for everything you do. Here's to continuing to care, learn, and grow — wherever our paths take us.
Ellen Taylor-Hird - A Mental Health Nurse in our Clinical Assessment Team.
I joined EMAS 8 years ago and was one of the first mental health nurses within the clinical assessment team. I work 12 hour shifts and my days consists of assessing people's mental health. We receive a large amount of 999 calls due to others or people believing they are in crisis. This is not always directly from the patient this can also be from other parties.
We also liaise and communicate with mental health teams, community services, the Clinical assessment team and the wider Emergency Operations Centres (EOC) to ensure the patient gets the best care.
It can be a very highly emotional/pressured job but also very rewarding. I have been qualified for 17 years and this is the longest I have stayed in a post, I find this particular role rewarding and was recognised for this a few years ago when I received a Chief Constables commendation award from Lincoln Police for a joint job between EMAS and Lincoln Police.
I have enjoyed seeing the Mental Health Clinicians Team grow and I am excited to see what the future holds for mental health within the emergency services.
Amy Henderson - Clinical Assessment Team
I qualified as a Registered Nurse in 2008 and spent the first decade of my career working in Lincoln’s Accident and Emergency department. After ten years I felt the need for a new challenge but still had a passion for emergency care.
That’s when I discovered that EMAS were recruiting nurses for the Clinical Assessment Team (CAT) in EOC. I’ve been a member of the CAT Team for seven years now.
As a member of this team, I conduct a remote telephone or video assessment of patients’ health and clinical needs to ensure they receive the most appropriate care. Whether it entails an ambulance, utilising alternative community services, assisting crews on-scene, or providing self-care advice, the appropriateness of an emergency ambulance may vary depending on the specific circumstances.
Over the years, I’ve dealt with a wide variety of 999 calls, and no two days are ever the same.
Currently, I am pursuing my Master’s degree and have recently been involved in the inaugural cohort of Professional Nurse Advocates for EMAS. I am eager to advance within the service and anticipate the opportunities that lie ahead.
Sean Morton - Senior Clinical Educator
I started my nursing career in the early 1990s, I trained at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London when nursing was a different profession to what it is now. I started my career when senior nurses were called ‘sister’ and woe betide anyone who said anything different.
I was one of only a handful of men who graduated from Barts in 1993, the hospital had a training school for nurses since 1877! And was a graduate of the newly implemented Project 2000 group of nurses.
This was the first of my mission to explore over my nursing career, to understand why there were so few men in nursing, a narrative that is sadly still an issue today. In 2019 I was fortunate to be selected to give a TEDx talk on “Challenging gender stereotypes in Nursing”
On completing my training, I worked on an acute neurosurgical unit where I learnt one of my many lessons in life, the need to question why I am doing what I do and, more importantly, to assess patients more than I was probably expected to do.
This became my second mission of my career, I enrolled onto a Bachelors Degree in Nursing and completed my dissertation on the Use and Abuse of the Glasgow Coma Score, this included exploring nursing and medical ritualistic practice that influences the way we provide healthcare. I soon found that the scoring system was not performed correctly and sadly, to his day we are still not getting it right.
I was then fortunate to start my journey into emergency medicine and nursing and started as a junior staff nurse at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, I worked alongside one the earliest HEMS units in the UK and I developed my keen interest in head injury management and trauma.
In 1999 I took the bold move to work in the United States and spent my first few years working as a staff nurse and then Charge Nurse at a busy inner city level on trauma centre in Phoenix, Arizona. Once again experiencing and working with trauma for the next few years.
I moved into education and then healthcare quality management during this time and found my passion for teaching and education.
Like the UK, the US healthcare system has its flaws and it became apparent to me that my third mission in my career was see how we can improvement what we do. I obtained a scholarship to study for a Masters degree and graduated with a MA in Organisational Management. This allowed me to explore how I could combine my missions in life, challenging what we expect, getting it right and how effective leadership can lead to quality improvement.
I was appointed Associate Professor of Nursing at Grand Canyon University and developed my fourth mission in my career, to explore how effective simulation can be implemented to improve patient outcomes and safety.
On my return to the UK in 2007, I worked briefly in the NHS before moving to teaching positions at the University of Nottingham and then the University of Lincoln, I had the privilege of working with hundreds of students studying to be a nurse and enjoyed seeing their growth and development into professionals. My role then took me into Advancing Clinical Practice where I was responsible for Service and Quality Improvement and Leadership modules at both Bachelors and Masters level.
In 2024, I faced something that, in my whole healthcare career I had never envisaged would have happened, I faced redundancy.
I took the bold move to take it and was fortunate to secure a position with EMAS in Autumn 2024. This move challenged me in my fifth mission to date. When I started my career, our healthcare professions were more clearly defined than they are now.
Fast forward 30 years and we see the healthcare landscape has changed dramatically, so, how does a nurse fit in with the ambulance service and education? It absolutely does - I find that despite our different training and approaches we all have one combined mission, that is to provide highly effective and safe care that is compassionate and understanding.
We don’t do what we do for the money, we do it because we care. I started my career because I wanted to care and I believe I have done throughout my own career as a nurse, this year celebrates 205 years since the birth of Florence Nightingale, who is probably best known as the lady with the lamp, however, she was an innovator, a mover and shaker, she questioned the status quo, she was a statistician and she was a nurse.