In the last month the BBC have reported on 5 different incidents where an Ambulance Service Vehicle has been involved in a Road Traffic Accident/Incident/Collision (or what ever you want to call it).  Of the five incidents two of them resulted in three deaths….

Biker killed in paramedic crash

The facts are simple….

Not only are ambulance personnel working harder due to short staffing, lack of resource, winter pressures and the inappropriate use of resources by the public, but also because of the government assessing the effectiveness of the ambulance service by using a clock.

Its been reported many times in the media recently that for a life threatening call we must respond within 8 minutes of the call being connected to the Ambulance Service, so the clock starts before we even know where we are sending the ambulance let alone what we are sending the ambulance too.  As has been proven recently we have been arriving on scene before we have been notified of the nature of the incident and the safety at the scene for ourselves.

This could mean the difference between taking the right kit into the house with us and being able to save someones life or having to run back out to the vehicle to get kit to take back in and the patient not surviving – unfortunately we don’t have a Sherpa to carry the entire contents of the ambulance into every job….

Sherpa

The other problem is that we may be arriving at a scene that is not safe.  This could result in the possibility of the crew being infected by patients suffering from medical conditions such as swine flu, being a casualty themselves as a result of a chemical or biological incident, or even being attacked….

In the same month there were two reports of Paramedics and their vehicles being attacked by members of the public.  Generally we  are quite good at preserving our own lives, and occasionally needed to rely on our “spidey sense”, but this has never been so important than now and we are having to use this sense more often just to stop ourselves from being hurt due to the ambulance control not being able to identify that there is a possible danger at the scene.

So what is the root cause of all of this mess that we are in?

Yep, the 8 minutes!

So what could we do, maybe we could look at the level of care that a patient receives rather than the speed that the patient would receive a treatment that might not even be appropriate.  We could take longer to assess the patients needs, we could send the appropriate resource rather than the nearest and fastest response and make sure that the patient receives the best and highest level of care…