YOU never know when you might need to call the emergency services. What is certain is that the moment you dial 999, you will want the police, fire or ambulance service to respond quickly.

In cases of life-threatening injury or illness, getting to the scene as soon as possible is particularly important for the ambulance service.

Life-saving procedures become less effective the longer the delay.

The best example of this is defibrillation – providing an electric shock to restart a heart that has stopped beating.

The chances of surviving a cardiac arrest go down by ten per cent for every minute defibrillation is not performed, so early intervention can really be a matter of life and death.

As a fifth-year medical student at Magdalen College, Oxford, I am delighted to have been involved in the setting up of a unique partnership between Oxford University Medical School and South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS).

Working together we have successfully recruited and trained 34 senior medical students at Oxford University as Community First Responders (CFRs) and have a further 50 students who will be fully trained in the next month.

Students sign up for shifts as pairs in a ‘dynamic response vehicle’ provided by SCAS and are sent by SCAS’ Emergency Operations Centre to stand by at different locations throughout Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, dependent on daily call activity.

The students are then dispatched to respond to patients with life-threatening illness or injury.

CFRs are never a substitute for the normal ambulance that you are used to seeing on the roads, but the hope is that by getting to you quicker than it might take for an ambulance, the CFRs can start rendering aid more quickly, increasing the chances of a good outcome.

This partnership will benefit the communities of Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, the local ambulance service and the medical students.

The vast majority of the students who have been recruited so far are interested in careers in emergency or pre-hospital emergency medicine and hope to use the opportunity that this voluntary initiative provides to gain experience as they start their careers.

Seeing patients in their homes, in the church or on the golf course can be very different to seeing patients in the predictable and controlled atmosphere of a hospital.

From my own experience of having been sent to an elderly woman who had a stroke in West Oxfordshire on my first shift, it is hugely exciting but I would be telling a mistruth if I were to pretend that the adrenaline was not pumping on the journey to the patient’s house.

This unique partnership between Oxford University Medical School and SCAS is a part of the bigger picture of pre-hospital emergency medicine in Oxfordshire.

Tim Parker, an innovative final-year student at Jesus College, has set up a Society for Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine and Major Trauma at the University and a national conference for medical students and junior doctors will be taking place at the John Radcliffe Hospital in November 2013.

So, should you ever have to ring 999 and ask for the ambulance service in the future, you may well see a medical student CFR first.

With the training we have received from the ambulance service, we will be able to offer potentially life-saving interventions while an ambulance resource is en route to the scene.

South Central Ambulance Service is always looking to recruit more Community First Responders. So, whether you live or work in Oxfordshire or are a student and are interested in volunteering for this vital cause, please telephone 0800 587 0207 or e-mail cfr@scas.nhs.uk