Eden-based consultant paramedic Vinny Romano will be a familiar face on BBC documentary series Ambulance as the spotlight shines on Cumbria in a new series.
Vinny, of Cliburn, near Penrith, joined North West Ambulance Service in 2000, initially on patient transport.
He worked his way through various positions and, two-and-a-half years ago, became the first person nationally to take on a new role of consultant paramedic for education.
“I’m still able to respond and respond regularly to the more serious incidents and that’s what you’ll see in the programme,” he said.
In recent weeks, Ambulance viewers have been given a moving and in-depth insight into the NWAS’s blue light response to the outbreak of COVID in the Liverpool and Manchester areas.
Casting his mind back to early 2020, Vinny said: “It was really scary. It was a frightening time and it still is a little; especially at the start of the pandemic when people really didn’t know what COVID was or how it was transmitted or how serious it was.
“We were going out to patients on a regular basis and we were just scared for our families — coming home; were you bringing it back to them? Some of our staff were staying in hotels just to protect families.
“It was a scary time and it still is to some degree because people are still catching COVID and people are still dying from it. I know the numbers are much lower but it’s still an illness that can cause problems.”
Last week, a new series of Ambulance began, focusing on Lancashire and Cumbria.
Vinny, who works in both counties, said: “I guess it will start to show the contrast between the kind of things that go on up in the Lake District, in Cumbria and Lancashire, compared with the cities of Liverpool and Manchester; the different kinds of incidents that we have but also the similarities that are there as well.
“The series is focused post-lockdown. We’ll be looking at a lot of the mental health issues that came out of COVID, of people being locked down for such a long time.
“It’s a very honest representation of what we do on a daily basis. Probably the biggest point of it is that it’s not just cherry-picking certain incidents, it’s showing what’s happening every day.
“It’s the softer side, the caring side that will start to come through as well; how we manage patients, how we care for them, more the hand-holding element of the job.”
Vinny, who took a media studies course at Cumbria College of Art and Design in Carlisle before joining NWAS, previously featured in a Border TV fly-on-the-wall documentary in the mid-2000s.
Of being followed again, by a Dragonfly Film and Television crew, he said: “They were very professional. They made sure they didn’t get in the way of the patient care we were delivering. It made it very easy to do the job without feeling like we were being watched.”
A married father of four sons, Vinny discussed his approach to leaving his family home for work on the front line. “We’ve got to have faith in the systems and the personal protective equipment that we wear,” he said.
“But we’ve all got a job to do. Everybody’s got a role to play in this, and there are always people out there who need your help, your support and being cared for, and somebody’s got to do it.
“That’s the thing: you can’t just turn your back on your job because times get more difficult.
“I’ve been out to family members and that’s when you start to realise that when you need an ambulance, you need an ambulance; and you need it and you want it as soon as possible because you’re at that crisis point. If everybody just downs tools, the whole system falls down.”
Away from his employment, Vinny is a well known musician with bands Absolutely and Squeeze Box. “That’s a nice contrast from the day job, to do something completely different,” he added.
Ambulance is shown on Thursdays, at 9pm, on BBC1.
