The call-out is the visible part. The preparation is the duty.

By Andrew Whitfield

My Community First Responder audit, 2025, using my own on-call hours and call-out data.

For my first post of 2026, I audited my 2025 year as a SECAmb Community First Responder, and as a trustee of Uckfield and Area Community First Responders (Charity Registration 1209095).

The headline numbers surprised me.

2025, in numbers (CFR on-call readiness only)

·       1,362 hours 35 minutes on call, being ready

·       260 call-outs

·       C1 104, C2 149, C3 7 category mix, in our reporting

A quick, plain-English note on categories:

·       C1: life-threatening, time-critical.

·       C2: emergency, time-sensitive, serious by definition for the patient and the people around them.

·       C3: urgent, not immediately life-threatening, but still requires timely help.

Month-by-month breakdown (for transparency)

Month	On-call hours	Call-outs	C1	C2	C3
Jan	103:15	13	11	1	1
Feb	72:35	15	5	10	0
Mar	107:45	18	7	9	2
Apr	146:50	28	14	14	0
May	118:20	16	6	10	0
Jun	98:00	20	8	11	1
Jul	81:40	25	6	19	0
Aug	170:40	31	11	19	1
Sep	67:05	10	2	8	0
Oct	136:55	24	7	16	1
Nov	139:50	25	11	14	0
Dec	119:40	35	16	18	1
Total	1362:35	260	104	149	7

I share this without incident details. This table is a simple annual accounting of my personal voluntary readiness and call-outs.

What “on call” actually looks like

Those hours are not spent sitting in an ambulance station.

Most of the time, I can be working from wherever I am, home office, on the move, in the community. If I am active and signed on, even if I am in a different part of the SECAmb area, the control room dispatchers can see where I am and may task me if I am the closest appropriate responder.

That is enabled by the NMA, the National Mobilisation Application, which is the system used to alert responders, share incident details, support navigation, and enable operational messaging and location awareness between responders and the control room.

It also means the phone goes off when life is normal.

It has happened more than once that I have been in a supermarket, the NMA sounds, and I have had to leave a trolley with a member of staff and exit quickly.

It has happened mid-phone call too. You end the call cleanly, and you just go.

Most people are excellent about it once you explain. Sometimes they look confused, especially if they hear the alert tone, which is very loud and sounds urgent. That sound cuts straight through whatever you were doing five seconds earlier.

I also carry an operational kit, including a defibrillator, oxygen, and trauma supplies such as dressings and a tourniquet.

Every call-out is a pattern interrupt. Sometimes it is a short attendance. Sometimes it becomes two or three hours, depending on what is needed, what is found, and what arrives next.

It is always a team effort

One of the easiest misunderstandings about emergency response is the idea of the lone responder.

In reality, you join a team that already exists.

The first “team” can be family, friends, colleagues, or passers-by. People who are doing their best in a frightening moment, trying to explain what is happening, trying to help, trying to stay calm.

When I arrive, my role is to add structure quickly: communicate clearly, share what I’m seeing, support the patient, and create enough order for the next resources to plug in smoothly.

That wider team can scale fast. It is not always three or four people. It can reach eight or ten once you include additional ambulance resources, fire, police, HEMS, and, in some situations, other specialist services such as Coastguard. The common thread is coordination, clarity, and pace.

From the first minute, you are also doing a dynamic risk assessment. Scene, hazards, bystanders, access, egress, and changing information. It is never static. You make decisions, you review them, and you change them if the facts change.

Readiness is not a slogan. It is a real-time operating discipline.

The training and competence layer (also CFR work)

The on-call hours are only one part.

There is also the ongoing training and requalification load, for example:

·       Monthly training, around 4 hours a month.

·       Additional courses, around 2 full days.

·       A 12-hour annual shift with a frontline paramedic crew.

·       BLS (Basic Life Support) online modules, around 18–20 hours per year.

·       Formal hands-on CPR requalification each year.

That is before you add the trustee responsibilities.

The trustee layer, and why it matters

As a trustee of Uckfield and Area Community First Responders (Charity Registration 1209095), there is governance, community engagement, and the unglamorous work of sustainability.

Three trustee meetings a year is the visible part.

Behind that sits the relationship work with local organisations, the community events, and the grant applications. In 2025 alone, I have put roughly 80–100 hours into grant applications.

Doing this review has been eye-opening. I had not realised, in a sober way, how much commitment sits behind the phrase “I volunteer”.

One last human point

Sometimes you are en route, adrenaline already rising, only to be stood down because you are no longer needed.

That moment is odd. The body is ready for action, and the situation has moved on without you.

Where does that adrenaline go?

You learn to manage it. You learn to reset. You learn that being “ready” includes the ability to return to normal life, calmly, without carrying the last call into the next hour.

That, too, is preparation.

I wanted this on the record: the visible response is only a fraction of what the role demands. The preparation is the duty.