I'm one of 12 paramedics for the North Wales Air Ambulance. We share shifts on the air ambulance and police helicopters. When I'm not flying, I'm back on the road in a Dolgellau ambulance.

I've always done jobs which aren't repetitive. I used to teach outdoor pursuits to children with learning and behavioural difficulties. A friend of mine was a paramedic in East Anglia and I thought, that's the job for me - you really don't know what you're going to be doing each day.

You go to jobs and you don't know what you're going to find when you get there, even though the 999 controllers are trained to get as much information as they can out of people. So, as those who are first on the scene, the main part of our job is making quick decisions about what's needed - you've got to be good at doing that.

We might be faced with someone who's had a farming accident with a chainsaw or a tractor and we've got to make quick decisions about treatment and which hospital would be best to fly them to. Also, we can now give special clot-busting drugs to people having cardiac arrests - the faster you give it, the less damage there will be to the heart, which improves long-term recovery.

Parts of Wales are so remote - in Dolgellau, we're almost an hour and a half from the nearest hospital, so the helicopter is vital.

The air ambulance gets called out to those doing outdoor activities here too - mountain bikers, hill walkers and horse riders. They come here because of the remoteness of the area, but that can make less serious injuries more dangerous. Something like a broken ankle might not be serious 10 minutes from a hospital, but if you're miles away and it will take hours for mountain rescue to carry you out, the long-term effects can be serious.

There are lots of designated places to land the helicopter, like sports fields, but if there isn't anywhere like that nearby it comes down to the discretion of the crew. Under the rules of emergency medicine, the pilot can land the helicopter anywhere he thinks is safe - it doesn't have to be pre-planned.

We often land in people's gardens and usually they're fine with it. They see the red helicopter and do all they can to help because they might need it in the future.

It can get quite rough though, we've got the mountains around us and they produce their own weather. You might suddenly see a big storm coming in and you need to factor that into the treatment of patients - you might not be able to go to the hospital you want because of the weather.

If the weather is really bad, some places are off limits, like valleys and mountains where the winds are very unpredictable and you can loose 300 feet in a second. But I love flying - when I was a schoolboy I wanted to be a pilot.

This job is great if you like excitement and an adrenalin rush, though you have to be very controlled, if you can't you won't be any good to anyone.
Meurig McMillan