'I just want to help people'

“I knocked on the door and could hear a commotion behind it,” says Josh, 21, a nursing and paramedicine student at ACU’s Ballarat Campus. “Then a woman answered and directed me into the living room where her son was on the floor, and he wasn’t in the best shape.”

The scene Josh encountered – an anxious mother, an unresponsive son – was not what he’d imagined for his Friday evening.

Just minutes earlier, he’d been standing on the platform at a railway station less than a kilometre away. He was waiting for a connecting train to Geelong to see a friend’s gig when he received a notification from the GoodSAM app, which prompts registered responders to attend nearby emergencies before an ambulance arrives.

The app had alerted him that a 30-year-old male was in cardiac arrest a few hundred metres away.

“I just grabbed all my stuff and ran as quickly as I could,” Josh recalls.

“As soon as I started running there was no turning back and no second thoughts. Whatever I faced on arrival I’d be ready to deal with.”

The patient was Daniel Svendsen. His mother, Heather, had called Triple Zero and begun CPR alongside her son’s friend, who was also present.

Josh, who is in the second year of his Bachelor of Nursing/Bachelor of Paramedicine, quickly took over after arriving on the scene. Although he had done placements with the Royal Flying Doctor Service and St John of God Ballarat Hospital, he had never performed CPR outside of the classroom.

“I just did all the initial CPR assessments I’d been taught at university, and I could see that the patient did not have a pulse and wasn’t breathing, he was very much lifeless,” he says. “So I commenced CPR and had the Triple Zero responders on the phone talking me through it, and I continued the compressions until the firies got there.”

Confusingly, after Josh’s first cycle of CPR, Daniel showed signs of life. But with the help of the Triple Zero responder, it was determined he had CPR-induced consciousness, a rare phenomenon where a patient in cardiac arrest becomes momentarily aware during resuscitation despite not having a pulse.

“That caught me off guard,” Josh says. “Initially I thought, ‘Oh great, it’s worked and he’s back to life’, but he wasn’t and the CPR needed to continue.”

When the paramedics arrived, they continued to treat Daniel, administering shocks with a defibrillator. Meanwhile, Josh comforted the family until he was called upon again. Alongside the firefighters and paramedics, he continued to help, rotating chest compressions to give the emergency responders a break.

With each passing moment, the likelihood of recovery diminished.

“We continued for around 45 minutes, and the paramedics were about to call his death – but just as they called it, the patient got a faint pulse back,” Josh says.

“That moment was pretty cool, seeing his body return to colour and knowing that his heart was beating independently. It’s a hard thing to explain, but it was just a surreal moment that I’ll never forget.”

A desire to help

For most of his childhood and adolescence, Josh Abbott had wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a police officer. In his mid-teens, however, his thinking began to change.

“I’ve always had this strong pull to help people, and my dad started to encourage me that maybe there was a more direct way of helping than joining the police force,” says Josh, who was raised in Geelong and attended Saint Ignatius College.

“He’d tell me that the number one thing he wished he could have done was to save a life directly, and that I was more likely to get that opportunity through nursing or paramedicine. From that, my mindset started to shift.”

Josh’s grandfather had also served a long career with Ambulance Victoria, giving Josh an early glimpse into the profession.

“I got to go into the station a few times and was quite inspired by what I saw,” he says. “But ultimately my attraction to nursing and paramedicine was that I just want to help people, and they offer great opportunities to provide support and care to those in a vulnerable position.”

For now, Josh is equally open to both professions, soaking up the knowledge and experience he’s gaining in the classroom and in placements. In his own understated way, he acknowledges that helping to save somebody’s life has given his confidence a boost.

“I’ve reflected on it a lot, and it’s definitely benefitted me, 100 per cent,” he says. “It’s reassuring to know that when faced with that situation, what I’ve been taught is effective and useful, and it hasn’t scared me away. I’m in the right industry and I enjoy being in this industry, and this experience will prepare me well for the next one.”

The teary reunion

Twelve days after Daniel Svendsen’s cardiac arrest, Josh got the chance to meet the man whose life he helped to save.

“That was the most amazing part of the whole thing – seeing Daniel and his mum and just giving them a big, long hug,” he says. “It was just surreal to get to meet the soul behind the body, to see him up and about – that was a special experience.”