EOC (Control Room) review - awful place to work
Pros
There aren't many jobs where you can save someone's life over the phone, or hear the first cries of a baby after you've instructed a caller on how to deliver a baby, but you get that in this job. There is a good sense of camaraderie with colleagues and I made some great friends. Full ambulance uniform is provided.
Cons
Where to start... When you join you get five weeks' training at training school. There are a couple of good training officers (or tutors as they are now called), but most of them treat new students like children and an 'us and them' attitude. Once you have finished training you will be posted to either Waterloo or Bow. The calltaking area at Waterloo is in a dingy windowless basement that regularly smells of sewage. The Bow control room is cramped and noisy. There is the odd good manager, but most are lazy and just lord it about doing very little actual work. They are so busy and so short staffed that you will get your head kicked in for 12 hours a day everyday. You will be sworn at, verbally abused and put unser a great deal of stress with one call after another, most of the time by timewasters who think the ambulance service is merely a mobile first aid service. Your calls will be quality assured by managers with little experience of doing the job (in most cases), and you can be expected to be pulled up for accidentally misphrasing things like 'put your cats and dogs away', etc, rather than being given constructive feedback on anything meaningful that may actually be of benefit to patient safety. They expect you to tell them if you need to go to the toilet - most normal people stop requesting permission to use the toilet when they leave school. There is a well documented culture of bullying within the LAS (both in and out of EOC), which is a matter of public record in CQC and other publically viewable reports. I regularly felt harrassed by lazy and incompetent managers that did not know what they were doing. Progression is woeful. They expect EMD2s to allocate on a nearly daily basis yet will not pay them the same salary as an allocator sat next to them, doing the same job for £10k a year more than them. They pay is very poor for the role - I started on just under £20k and was on around £27k at the time I left, which is a lot less than similar roles with other emergency services. The salary does not reflect what ia expected of staff and should be higher. I would go home from work and find it very difficult to switch off. I would be stressed all the time and constantly tired. If you are considering a career out on the road as a Paramedic/TEAC I would strongly advise against going for this role. They will tell you it's a foot in the door but in reality you still have to jump through the same hoops as someone from civvy street. If you screw up or have to much time off sick however then you could jeapardise your career before it's begun.
