Offaly paramedic retires from ambulance service after quarter century of service

AFTER over a quarter of a century of serving the people of the midlands, Tullamore based paramedic Barry Flynn has this week retired from the National Ambulance service.

Barry says that he joined the service as a “late and accidental vocation”. His early adult life was spent as a broadcast journalist with midlands 103. During this time the midlands based ambulance crews were seeking improvements to their service, such as full 24 hour ambulance cover, proper ambulance stations, increased training to paramedic level and 2 person crewing to replace the ambulance driver/nurse model.

While highlighting their campaign Barry became very interested in their work. On the successful completion of the campaign the Midland health board ran an advert to recruit and train more staff. Barry applied, but was unsuccessful.

This led him to be approached by then Tullamore based private ambulance company, Waverly ambulance, which he joined, part time in 1998.

In 1999 he trained to Emergency medical technician (EMT) level through Dublin Fire Brigade at their O’Brien institute/NorthEastern university in Dublin. On completion of his studies he again applied to the Midland Health Board and was successful with an initial posting to Portlaoise ambulance station.

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After a couple of months in Portlaoise Barry transferred to Tullamore station, closer to his home in Clara. Within a short period of his transfer he had transitioned from EMT to paramedic and had become a mentor to new recruits.

He had also become Tullamore’s representative on the new Ambulance working group, a station supervisor and an advanced driving instructor.

Having worked through Covid, Bird Flu, foot and mouth and numberous weather alerts he has dealt with everything from childbirth to sudden death.

He has attended accidents on the roads and on the waterways, accidents involving trains and aircraft, shootings, stabbings, murders, sports injuries and thousands of medical emergencies, but denies that he has seen it all stating that “there’s always some paramedic that has seen something else”.

He refused to be drawn on his worst call quoting “patient confidentiality” adding that he could never understand why people asked about any frontline worker’s worst call knowing it was going to be something horrible.

Regarding the hardest part of the job, like most frontline staff he mentions emergencies involving children, stating however that compared to some of his colleagues, thankfully he did not have too many of those during his career.

He also said that he found informing family member’s bad news was difficult and dealing with suicide calls were particularly tough.

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Fellow staff members described him as a professional, loyal, compassionate, resilient and dedicated medic who placed particular emphasis on empathy, not only for the patient, but for their family too. Always willing to support his colleagues, he particularly mentored new staff towards talking and listening to patients, realising their vulnerability, as well as the important medical interventions.

At his recent retirement presentation Barry’s crew partner Gearoid Oman said “he leaves behind a legacy that will be hard to match”

On his reasons for leaving Barry stated that “you know when the time is right”. With only a few years left to retirement age he says his body is telling him to get out while he is still fit and healthy, although he also refers to the recent low morale among frontline staff as a factor.

Having been heavily involved in his community of Clara for decades, Barry is unlikely to be bored following his retirement. Each year he is involved in the St. Patrick’s day parade and the Christmas lights switch on.

He co-ordinates the local defibrillators, teaches community CPR and has been a member of various local committees including the swimming pool, fire station action group, town plan and school parents associations.

He is also involved in regular local charity fundraising events.

As for his immediate plans, Barry says he intends to “chill for the Summer, and see what happens next”.