More than a thousand Australians have been employed as paramedics in London over the last decade, making up around a third of the city’s recruits.
The London Ambulance Service (LAS) has seen 1,186 people from Australia start as paramedics between 2014 and 2024, almost matching the 1,376 British, according to FOI data obtained.
These figures come a decade after the LAS first started advertising for Australians to make the move, due to the similar skills and levels of training paramedics training in the UK receive.
The number of new starter Australian paramedics is also significantly above the second-most employed foreign group joining the LAS, with 63 South Africans, followed by 55 people from New Zealand and Ireland.
Director of ambulance operations at LAS, Darren Farmer, said: “Our Australian and New Zealand staff play such a vital role in caring for the people in the capital.
“Working as a paramedic in London will give you a level of experience and expertise which is second to none, with the opportunity to really develop your practice as a clinician and provide the best possible care to patients in their hour of need.”
There are reciprocal outcomes for Australian paramedics employed by the LAS, as while they can fill NHS staff shortages, many also gain significant work experience, skills, as well as the opportunities to travel.
Matt Gaston, 29, moved to London from Western Australia in 2019 and has found benefits from working in London for one of the city’s busiest areas for call-outs, the north-east.
He said: “Over the last six years, I’ve seen hundreds of Aussie paramedics come and go and experience a little beginning of their careers here in London.
“There are so many different roles in this service that you can’t do whilst working in Australia, from OPC centres, terror response vehicles and now management.”
For people in Australia training to be paramedics, it can take years to get a graduate position in an ambulance service, due to it being a well sought-after career with less demand.
Working with the LAS also provides many more opportunities in terms of exposure and experience, particularly for Gaston coming from a rural town in Western Australia to being based in Hackney.
He said: “Where I used to work back home, it was much more rural, way less diverse in cultures and had much less built-up areas.
“The hospitals are so far away from each other that people generally got in their own cars and drove themselves to the hospital.”
Moving to London also provides life opportunities which are particularly desirable for young Australians, who are not able to experience working in busy central London but also travel around the world.
For 24-year-old Nicole Kennedy from Sydney, accessibility to travel from London was one of the main attractions to working in the LAS.
Particularly over the last couple of years, she said improvements have been made to make this more possible.
Kennedy said: “When I first started it was awful, the roster was just complete chaos, the hospitals were stupidly busy, we were spending up to 10 hours in corridors, the conditions were just not great.
“Over the last few years they have brought in systems so we now have time limits in hospitals, and the roster has completely changed to four days on and five off which is so much more sustainable.”
Through working out of Hackney, Kennedy has found great benefits for her professional career as well.
She said: “Being able to work here has given so much experience in loads of different medical conditions and needs of different people, where in Sydney it is nowhere near as culturally diverse.
“I have had so much more exposure to trauma cases such as stabbings and gun violence, which are more common in London, as well as alcohol-related or social care issues which you don’t get so much in Australia.”
The LAS has also made it an easy process for Australian paramedic graduate to make the move, providing them with a sponsored visa to relocate, and paying for expenses such as flights, accommodation and induction training.
As stated in their pilot International Paramedic Recruitment Programme: “Our analysis of potential countries resulted in Australia being identified as the country most closely aligned.”
There is a subsequent priority for international recruitments from Australia, due to a track record of success from Australian University students, English generally being their first language and the oversupply of medics in the country.
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