Today’s correspondent asks:
Is there a legal requirement, when dealing with the community, for an ambulance service to present volunteers with a role-specific title on their uniform, such as ‘Ambulance Volunteer’ or can the ambulance service replace said title with an already distinguishable title such ambulance officer or responder or EMT??
There is no legal requirement to identify that people are volunteers. The person’s employment status is irrelevant.
POSTSCRIPT
One simply can’t predict what will create interest. I thought this would be a short uncontroversial answer but the discussion on Facebook demonstrated that this was not the case. A long, sometimes passionate and I would say sometimes off topic debate followed this post. Below is a summary of that discussion and my conclusions. As this is a blog about the law I try to limit myself to legally relevant issues.
1. Is there an obligation to identify someone as a volunteer? No. The question of whether or not a person is a volunteer relates to whether they get paid or not. That is relevant in industrial law, in the context of this discussion it is irrelevant. Both the paid and volunteer ambulance officer represent their service and respond as that service. Their employment status is irrelevant.
2. Volunteer status does not reflect skill set. The claim ‘a tertiary qualified paramedic is a totally different proposition than a volunteer’ is to confuse employment status with skill set. A ‘tertiary qualified paramedic’ is the same whether he or she is a volunteer or not. A ‘tertiary qualified paramedic is a totally different proposition’ to a well-trained first aider even if the first aider is being paid, and the paramedic is a volunteer. Doctors, nurses and paramedics volunteer their services; they don’t have lesser skills when they are volunteering compared to when they are ‘at work’.
3. The mere fact that someone gets out of an ambulance and has a clinical role is not holding that person out to be a paramedic. I agree with the comment “You’re not masquerading anything if you’re not using the word Paramedic. “Their uniform” suggests nothing to the patient other than that you’re engaged by the Ambulance provider to deliver a service.”
4. It may be useful to use badges and titles to reflect skill set but I do not think that has anything to do with patient protection or choice. A person who rings triple zero for an ambulance cannot insist that the service only sends paramedics. They may choose to refuse treatment from a person with a lower skill set but that would presume that they know what the skill set meant. The title ‘paramedic’ is protected, other titles (EMT, First Responder, First Aider etc) are not. That means that the ambulance services can use those titles as they see fit. The only people who will know what those titles mean will be others in the same industry and same service. That is useful so at the scene all the responders can identify who has what skill set and who can be tasked to do what. It is irrelevant to the patient.
5. Paramedicine does not ‘own’ prehospital medical care. There are many in the field, ranging from small volunteer first aid providers to, as one commentator noted, very expensive Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS). That no-one ‘owns’ pre-hosptial care is one argument for paramedic registration – now at least if someone has the title ‘paramedic’ it means something. It does not mean they are the only players in the field but they can be identified as paramedics. The claim “prehospital medical care is owned by paramedics in Australia” is not correct and is not reflected in the law and is not a consequence of paramedic registration.
6. “[P]rovide a level of care fitting all communities in all areas” does not require that every ambulance officer is paid, or that every ambulance officer is a paramedic. You may hope that everyone in Australia will get treated by an intensive care paramedic when required but that is not feasible and states and territories have to make choices on how to allocate resources. It is my understanding that every state and territory (except perhaps the ACT) uses volunteer ambulance officers. What level of training they receive is a matter for the ambulance services. If communities think they are not receiving an adequate service that is a political, not legal issue.
7. This debate has become a debate about whether or not ambulance services should use the services of volunteers (and I infer volunteers who are not paramedics). That was not the question asked but so be it. For a discussion on that point see https://emergencylaw.wordpress.com/…/the-role-of…/
Australian Emergency Law 
Not a legal point, but it is not helpful for volunteer engagement to label them differently from paid staff by differing titles, uniforms etc.
The other side of this is that as a member of the public, I don’t care whether your wearing of the uniform entails money going into your bank account every fortnight. I care about what capability and skill level you bring to being able to manage the situation I or my family member find myself in.
What are they thoughts on identifying skill sets
I think the “they” in the question is a typo. Titles don’t reveal skill sets except to those “in the know”. To the extent that a title DOES reveal a skill set the employment status is irrelevant
I want only the most qualified people treating me my family or friends in the event of the worst. I pay medical insurance and if i jump in a plane i dont want a volunteer pilot flying me around similarly if i have an operation i don’t want a volunteer surgeon.
Well you’d better leave Australia then, or at least don’t venture beyond the metropolitan areas or to the beach. If you are in rural or remote Australia and are involved in motor vehicle accident the ambulance, the rescue squad and the fire brigade may all be staffed by volunteers. At hospital you may be treated by an honorary medical officer. If later you need assistance getting to see a medical specialist you may need to call on Angel Flight and a volunteer pilot will fly you to where you need to go.
If you go into the water you may rely on the volunteer surf lifesavers or the Volunteer Marine Rescue Service.
Volunteer status does not reflect skill set. Doctors, nurses and paramedics volunteer their services; they don’t have lesser skills when they are volunteering compared to when they are getting paid. Volunteers in the ambulance, fire and rescue services are not poorly qualified just because they are volunteers.
So what you’re saying is you’re only happy to use my medical services if you pay me? I really wish the bulk of the population thought like you, I wouldn’t have to waste my time bulk billing, or worse volunteering my services out of some twisted desire to help my fellow community member.
I’ll stop pulling up at motor vehicle accidents as well as I’d hate to come across as a lesser skilled doctor. Airlines better get ready to upgrade me before I agree to see a sick passenger because I’m clearly going to do them a disservice until I upskill and move to first class.
I should have asked Westfield for a gift certificate before treating that seizure in the food court.
What about the collapsed teenager I treated at the evacuation centre during the bushfires that I attended just to see if I could lend a hand… I didn’t even get a sandwich out of that. My God, I could have accidentally killed the poor girl with such shoddy volunteer skills…