You Called an Ambulance for What?

Tim Booth

Jul 2023 · Macmillan Publishers Australia · Narrated by Tim Booth

About this audiobook

Tim Booth is shocked when his first emergency callout for someone short of breath turns out to be an adult man with a blocked nose. Far from beginner's luck, this turns out to be an omen for the rest of his paramedic career.

Between the obligatory stories of objects lodged in body cavities and grown men who can't look after themselves when their wives are away, Tim finds that the promised life-saving moments are far outweighed by the trivial, frustrating and bizarre ambulance callouts. He and his colleagues battle fatigue, abuse and burnout - treated with coffee, occasional moments of heroism, and a healthy dose of dark humour.

Told with cutting wit, pathos and disarming insight, You Called an Ambulance for What? is a comedic behind-the-sirens look at the challenges, absurdities and shocking reality of life as an Australian intensive care paramedic.

Ratings and reviews

This is for the audio book. Just very monotone and can tell is just the guy reading, not actually telling the story. Im sure reading the actual book is better, but could not deal with the tone of the audiobook. You really need someone with a bit more passion and personality in their voice to get invested in the story.

Great to listen to. Loved the humour. Love the message. Well written.

Everything about this story is relatable, on-point, sometimes poignant and frequently hilarious.

About the author

Tim Booth is an intensive care paramedic who worked for six years in south-west Sydney, patching up the sickest, strangest, and silliest of patients who called 000 for all manner of trauma and triviality. Prior to his career in healthcare, Tim was a motoring journalist who worked for Top Gear Australia magazine.

After deciding he no longer wanted a 9 to 5 office job, but still wanted to drive like The Stig, Tim switched the flashy Mercedes sports cars for Mercedes vans with flashing lights and left the media industry to study paramedicine. Honing his craft in the rough and demanding suburbs of Sydney's south-west, such as Bankstown, Liverpool and Campbelltown, Tim achieved the highest clinical level of paramedic - an intensive care paramedic - just three years into his career.

He continues to punish himself with the gruelling night shifts and long days that being a paramedic demands and occasionally revisits his former life in the form of freelance journalism on the side.

After surviving the worst that the COVID-19 pandemic threw at the ambulance service, Tim left south-west Sydney to pursue a (hopefully) more leisurely pace as a paramedic on the north coast of NSW.