Emergency medical services in Australia

In all other states and territories, the activities of St John Ambulance are all limited to first aid training and special events support, with the occasional disaster response.

In all states with the exception of Queensland and Tasmania, users who are not on welfare benefits are billed directly for their usage of an ambulance.

While helicopters provide good service in coastal areas with high population density, in the more sparsely settled interior, distances can be vast, and fixed-wing aircraft are the preferred mode of transport.

Commencing in 1998 the MFB's EMR program is run in partnership with Ambulance Victoria (AV) to ensure rapid trained response to Computer-aided Dispatch (CAD) "priority 0" (suspected cardiac or respiratory arrest) medical emergencies across Melbourne.

Under the EMR program, MFB firefighters are simultaneously dispatched with AV paramedics to all priority 0 medical emergencies within the metropolitan fire district.

In 60% of these EMR events, MFB firefighters arrive first on scene and commence initial patient assessment and provide care as required.

On arrival, AV paramedics take over responsibility for patient care with MFB firefighters then providing assistance as required.

Due to the reported success of this program it has been expanded to include some full-time stations run by Victoria's Country Fire Authority.

Ambulance services in Australia use, for the most part, well educated professional staff, supplemented in low volume rural areas by volunteers.

[citation needed] These older programs continue to be necessary to ensure ambulance services are able to directly train additional staff to fill shortages and as the numbers of degree graduate paramedics being produced by the university system are insufficient to meet ambulance services' requirements for new employees.

The program, which typically takes an additional year to complete, involves theory, clinical and supervised practice components.

[11] Australian ambulance services generally publicise a response time standard of 'around 10 minutes' on high priority emergency calls.