Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts officially welcomed 41 new Advanced Care Paramedics today.

The graduation ceremony celebrates 30 months of hard training.

Sebastian Sinclair reports.

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TRANSCRIPT

It was a roar of applause and laughter all round.

One by one graduates from the Queensland Combined Emergency Services Academy stood up to recieve their diploma.

But it hasn’t been an easy journey for the graduates.

Jeremy Goble, Advanced Care Paramedic Graduate: “Its been a long road. We’ve actually had to do a lot of learning, sacrifice a lot for families and friends just to be able to put in the hard yards to get here.”

Brenden Brimaconde, Advanced Care Paramedic Graduate: “We always put in hard hours well before today but yeah, 12 hour shifts.”

The school of Ambulance and Paramedics Studies aims to prepare its trainees with the highest quality of service Queensland has to offer.

Neil Roberts, Qld Emergency Services Minister: “New South Wales delivered 50 per cent of Code One responses, that’s a real emergency, within 10.3 minutes. Queensland ambulance officers did that in 8.4 minutes.”

The forty one graduates join the already 3,000 strong existing ambulance officers and will be based around Queensland.

For many graduates, work will commence immediately. Others will go on to continue their clinical studies.

Sebastian Sinclair, QUT News.