What happened
Yael Barker, 42, a paramedic with the Welsh Ambulance Service based in Roath, had just arrived at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. She was in the back with a patient and told her she would book her in and then come back.
The patient sat upright and punched her, in Barker’s words, “with the full force of her weight”. Barker told the student paramedic to get out. The patient then kicked her twice in the left shoulder, once in the stomach and once on the forearm. Barker felt “a horrific shooting pain” down her left arm and was winded. The patient got off the ambulance and ran at two more of Barker’s colleagues, punching one and narrowly missing the other.
Barker was given pain relief for muscle and tissue swelling. The damage lasted: rotator cuff injury, tendonitis, a partially dislocated shoulder and trapped nerves. She was off work for more than 15 months, and came back with her left shoulder more than 50 per cent weaker than her right.
The outcome
At Cardiff Crown Court in April 2026 Teri Jones, 38, of Trowbridge, Cardiff, pleaded guilty to two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and was given six months’ imprisonment, suspended for 18 months.
Lee Brooks, the service’s executive director of operations, described a “split-second act of violence” with a “devastating and long-term impact”. After the assault the service renewed its “With Us, Not Against Us” campaign.
What went wrong
The isolation was built into the vehicle. The rear of an ambulance has one exit, and the clinician treating the patient is standing between that patient and it. At the hospital doors the crew splits, one member in the back and one in the cab or at the tailgate. The person closest to the risk is the person furthest from the way out.
The sources record no investigation into how the job was crewed or what was known about the patient on arrival. That absence is the finding here, not a gap to fill.
One thing worked. Barker told the student to get out, and the student got out.
What it teaches
A vehicle is the hardest lone-working environment in the service, because there is no retreat and nobody standing behind you. Positioning is the control that remains, decided before the doors shut: which seat is nearest the exit, and what the clinician in the back does with a patient who suddenly sits up.
Signals matter as much. A word or hand signal meaning “get out of the back now” needs agreeing before the shift, and it has to work without alerting the patient.
The service’s part is the crew mix, and the point at which a rising patient becomes a police matter. Neither is answered by the sources.
Questions for the room
- In the back of your vehicle, which seat is nearest the door, and who sits in it?
- What is your agreed signal that you need your colleague out of the back?
- When a patient becomes agitated on the way to hospital, at what point do you ask for police, and who decides?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable, because the record rests on one outlet: the ambulance service’s own news release. The pack and the record disagree on the outcome. The record says the release gave none; the release does carry the plea, the court and the suspended sentence, so that paragraph is confirmed against the source as read on 20 October 2026 and the record’s line is out of date. No employer investigation finding appears in either document.
Our lone working training covers positioning and escalation for staff who work with no second pair of hands.
Sources
- Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust, 2026 · https://ambulance.nhs.wales/news/nhs/2026/no-one-should-be-attacked-for-trying-to-help-violent-assault-leaves-paramedic-unable-to-work-for-15-months/
Reviewed 20 October 2026.