Hi all!

My name's Hance and I'm a paramedic with the London Ambulance Service - London's city-wide Ambulance Trust. We have around 10,000 volunteers, staff members and affiliated students and answer up to 2 million 999 calls a year. A very busy service for sure!

Our staff work diligently, responding to 999 calls 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. With the intensity of our work, our staff are experiencing rising levels of burnout, fatigue and unfortunately our fair share of late, sleepless nights before and after work. Not the most pleasant of experiences but we still try our best to do our jobs!

To address these issues, my colleagues from Friern Barnet Ambulance station and I are raising funds for the London Ambulance Charity this summer with a Dragon Boat Race on the River Thames.

(I'm not a very aquatic person and bodies of water terrify me, but I've signed myself up to it nonetheless!)

All donations go towards funding for wellbeing initiatives, healthier working conditions and rest breaks where we can look after ourselves during our time on the road or in a stressful control room. This will in turn ensure we have healthy, well-looked after staff members that provide the very best patient care for those who need us.

Thank you so much for reading through and we hope you can support us during these times :)