I have a personal interest with drowning research as for the past 10 summers I have been employed to provide a sea and beach safety service working with the council beach patrol team under taking various roles in preventing and responding to coastal emergencies. Largely my role is to prevent accidents from occurring and cover roughly 33 miles of coastline with my team. I am one of the longest serving members of the team and a senior member of staff at the busiest station on our coastline. I have also been involved with my local coastal Search And Rescue team as a volunteer with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution as a probation boat crew member as well as Her Majesty Coastguard as a rescue officer and acting station officer where my roles have predominately responding to maritime 999 emergencies. For example, coordinating searches for missing people on land, search and recovery of missing swimmers, locating and co-directing rescues of persons in the water and vessels in distress as well as responding to those stuck in the mud as a rescue technician.
Within my voluntary roles I have also delivered sea and beach safety sessions to youth groups, schools and clubs with station visits and beach visits. Further to this I am also in the process of applying to study a master’s in public health alongside my full-time job as a BSc (Hons) Graduate paramedic, I would like to focus my study of public health around drowning and water related activates.