About Us? 

We are Plymouth Night Patrol, Plymouth's award winning, lifesaving team dedicated to emergency response and safeguarding in the night-time economy. Our volunteers receive extensive training allowing them to deploy, tri-weekly, onto Plymouth's streets, safeguarding their peers on nights out. 

Interested in joining our diverse and responsive team? By becoming a Plymouth Night Patrol volunteer, you will gain a wealth of skills you never thought you would get out of your time at university. Our volunteers come from an extensive range of courses and backgrounds, brought together by a shared passion to make Plymouth's student nightlife safe. 

When you join us as a volunteer, you will receive extensive Emergency First Responder training to enable you to deploy as one of our officers within a team. If you're looking to get involved, but are unsure about the medical aspect of the society, we also offer training to become a Control Desk Officer, where you will be trained to assist our Emergency First Responders, answer calls, and direct our teams to incidents using state of the art software. 

Our volunteer officers provide an unrivalled level of service to the community and are part of a project that strives to make Plymouth the safest city it can be for students to work, rest and play in. Volunteering with Plymouth Night Patrol is an experience unlike that of any other student group; an opportunity to directly save lives and be there when vulnerable people have no where else to turn.  

What Do We Do? 

• Patrol core nightlife areas of Plymouth in teams of 2-3 engaging with students on nights out and making early interventions to assist vulnerable individuals. 

• Respond to emergency calls from venues regarding vulnerable, unwell, or injured students. 

• Provide emergency medical support to ill or injured individuals before the arrival of an ambulance. 

• Support student victims of crime on nights out and provide a visible deterrent to prevent street crime occurring. 

• Monitor Plymouth's waterfront for safety issues, persons in trouble and disorder and escalate this to the relevant authorities where appropriate. 

• Engage with students regarding safe behaviour on nights out including drug risk awareness, drink safety awareness and sexual assault support. 

• Implement immediate safeguarding for vulnerable students including removing them from danger and separating intoxicated individuals from less intoxicated parties who may be trying to take advantage of them. 

• Liaise with Police, Venues, Street Rangers, and other teams to identify areas of vulnerability and improve the cities safety resource deployment 

Our Training 

All the Training we offer is free to our members, before deploying with PNP, members need to attened a training course. We also run fortnightly training sessions which follows our training syllabus and provides CPD to our members. 

• A choice of either a 1 Day Control Desk Officer Training Course or a 4 Day Emergency First Responder Course.

• Control Desk Officer Training includes: Scheme induction, ‘Casualty Care’ training, and incident response management. The training includes mental health awareness, drug and alcohol care, operational procedures, manual handling, welfare support, emergency call handling, use of our incident response system, communicating with teams and other agencies to ensure the correct support is arranged. 

• Emergency First Responder Qualification. Our gold standard in-house qualification to become a PNP First Responder. This training takes place over two consecutive weekends. This qualification will allow you to work in our teams on shift providing care and support to those who need it most. Training includes airway management, resuscitation, trauma care, medication administration, mental health awareness, drug and alcohol care, operational procedures, manual handling, welfare support, managing medical emergencies and working alongside ambulance clinicians. 

• Regular scenario training building on your core skills and applying them to realistic examples of cases we deal with, week in week out. 

• Regular CPD evenings with external speakers from a range of backgrounds (ambulance, police, mental health services, drug and alcohol services) to allow you to progress and develop your skills and learning for your role. 

• The oportunity to become one of our Cycle Response Unit Officers. Cycle Response teams often arrive on scene first, and often deal with the more serious incidents we encounter. Plus cycling is a great way to stay fit and healthy!

Once your training is complete, we ask for a minimum of 2-3 shifts per month. Attendance at training and CPD sessions is in no way mandatory however they are great ways for you to expand upon your skills and increase your confidence in dealing with difficult and unusual situations.

Is This Just For Student Healthcare Professionals? 

Not at all! Plymouth Night Patrol is an inclusive scheme that welcomes volunteers from a range of backgrounds. Our members come from all across the university faculties and subjects; from Primary Education all the way to Engineering. Our members may come from different courses, but we all have the desire to help those in need when no one else can.

Is This Role For Me? 

We won’t lie to you, being a Plymouth Night Patrol Officer can, at times, be stressful. Our shifts run overnight, with shift hours varying, but are usually around 5-6 hours in length. In this time, we often walk many miles even when the weather is not on our side. By the very nature of the role, we also deal with some difficult situations and difficult people. However, we make a huge difference to vulnerable people and occasionally our actions directly save lives. So why not join us for a taste of what our officers get up to. 

Click HERE to fill out our sign-up form.

If you can't make up your mind, why not come out on a shift with us as an observer? You'll be attached to an experienced team of Emergency First Responders for a shift, to get a taste of what we do, and see if Plymouth Night Patrol is for you before making up your mind.

Thanks for reading! Please get in touch if you have any questions and we look forward to welcoming you to our team.