Medal for fantastic paramedic

PARKDALE resident and MICA paramedic Margaret Murphy has been recognised with an Ambulance Service Medal in this year’s Australia Day Honours List for her outstanding work around improving patient outcomes in cardiac arrest cases, and service “beyond the norm”.

Mrs Murphy has spent the past 20 years as a MICA paramedic and was appointed as a clinical support officer in 2013 to work in pre-hospital and paramedic education, research and continuous improvement.

She has made significant contributions to a number of projects as part of advancing practice at Ambulance Victoria, particularly in improving outcomes for patients who suffer cardiac arrest.

Part of that work has been studying CPR procedures and cardiac arrest survival rates overseas and implementing changes that will improve survival rates in Victoria.

“Some places around the world that have great survival rates don’t necessarily have vastly different CPR or treatment practices, they just have different ways of linking things together, and we can learn from that,” she said.

Those changes include better community education, better access to defibrillators, better coordination of services and better practices which lead to more confident paramedics.

To support ongoing and continuous improvements in patient care, she has been involved in a range of endeavours including as a member of Ambulance Victoria’s cardiac arrest working group, the EXACT (Reduction of oxygen after cardiac arrest) trial and also the ‘Restart a Heart’ day group.

She was an important contributor to the redevelopment of the organisation’s clinical practice guidelines and teaching and training delivery to improve paramedic understanding and management of cardiac arrest in Victoria.

Mrs Murphy said she was “honoured” and humbled to be recognised for her work, and hopes to continue driving change and improvement in the ambulance service.

“Until we have 100 per cent survival rate there are things we can improve on.”

First published in the Chelsea Mordialloc Mentone News – 1 February 2017