Man attacked WA ambo with butcher hook

A drug-affected man who tried to stab a paramedic with a butcher's hook has been sentenced to two years in prison, with a Perth judge saying ambulance officers are too often exposed to violence at work.

Paramedics treated John Joseph Tynan after he collapsed at a Geraldton pharmacy, in Western Australia's Mid West region, in May last year.

The 35-year-old became agitated while being transported in an ambulance, took a butcher's hook out of his pocket and lunged at a paramedic sitting beside him, narrowly missing the officer's leg.

Tynan became tangled up in the seatbelts, which stopped him from reaching the ambulance officer, the Western Australia District Court heard on Monday.

The ambulance officer said the hook, made of a sharp and heavy metal about 15cm long, landed centimetres from his right knee.

Tynan also had a knife in his pocket at the time, the court heard.

"Ambulance officers are too often exposed to the threat of violence and actual violence in the course of doing the essential work that they do," Judge Fiona Vernon said.

"You made what was very clearly a serious attempt to injure someone, who was trying to help you, with a nasty weapon.

"It must have been very frightening for the victim to experience, and I'm told that that was the ambulance officer's first day on the job in Geraldton."

Tynan, who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault against an ambulance officer, has a criminal record that includes other convictions for assaulting a public officer.

With time already served, he will be eligible for parole later this week, but it will be up to the Prisoner Review Board to decide whether he should be released.