Driving Faculty

Hello and welcome to the South Western Ambulance Service Driving Faculty web page.

I understand that for many of our learners the emergency response driving course may seem a daunting experience.

In just a few short weeks you’ll be responding to emergency calls in an ambulance weighing almost 4.5 tons and costing upwards of £120,000.  Our job is to prepare you for this; making you the best driver you can be whilst equipping you with the knowledge and skill to attend any emergency call safely.

I’d like to re-assure you that we work with our learners to achieve their very best and our success rate is fantastic. Almost all of our learners achieve the required standard, but this is not a ‘turn-up-and-pass’ course. Our tutors will give you all of the input you need to do your best and in return you’ll need to commit time, effort and dedication to achieve the standard.

Before we get onto the pre learning I’d like to introduce you to our team — Driving Team. They are all fantastic and absolute experts at what they do. Unlike many other ambulance Trusts all of our tutors are dedicated driving tutors. We don’t use clinical tutors to deliver driver training; only driving tutors. This means you get an absolute expert every time.

On this webpage you’ll find information about your upcoming driving course- please take the time to look at these before starting.

You’ll be able to find some of these documents on the Trusts internal Intranet system when you get access to the IT system and other documents will be given to you during your driving course.

I often get asked about the structure of our course. You’ll get all of the information you need on day one, but in very simple terms you’ll be split into groups of three, with each group allocated a tutor for the full three weeks.

You’ll develop your system of car control during week one (you can check out more of this by searching ‘Roadcraft – the police driver’s handbook’). In week two you’ll start to make more progress, sometimes above the posted speed limit (where it’s safe to do so) whilst honing your system skills and developing your advanced observation skills. Towards the end of week two you’ll likely start to use blue lights and sirens.

In week three you’ll be practicing emergency response driving using the skills you’ve developed in weeks one and two. This includes practice driving in darkness.

You’ll use a range of vehicles; within the team we use unmarked Skoda Octavia’s (similar to our rapid response cars) but without the ambulance reflective markings and Mercedes sprinter and fiat transit driver training vans. The vans have two rows of seats, so that everyone can join in with the learning. Occasionally we have to hire in other vehicles but we always make sure they are suitable for learning. Finally, we try to get every learner into an actual ambulance too; often this will be an old operational ambulance so this gives you a real feel of how the vehicle handles during emergency response.

If you’ve got any other questions, please contact our team administrators — jo.gray@swast.nhs.uk or joanne.kay@swast.nhs.uk 

If you are undertaking an Emergency Care Assistant course with us you can find information relating to that course HERE

I wish you all the very best with your learning and hope to see you either during your course or operationally once you’ve qualified.

Robin Gwinnett,

Learning and Development Manager (Driver Training)