Pushbike paramedics
Our reporter Andrew Fletcher writes:
"A paramedic rides a push bike through one the world busiest airports to reach a sick passenger.
"Dial 999 at Heathrow airport and expect to be treated by a paramedic on a push bike loaded with life-saving equipment. Bikes are the quickest way to get to a casualty through a crowded passenger terminal according to the London Ambulance Service. The team now operates across all 5 terminals and deals with an average of four hundred calls a month. Patrols could be used for London's Olympic sites in 2012. Paramedic Guy Dunk explains in the video below how the service works and rushes to the aid of a young passenger who's fallen sick just before boarding a plane.
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"If you're going to have a heart attack Heathrow airport is probably the safest place to do it - paramedics on bicycles can often reach patients who've stopped breathing within three minutes (it's thought that for every minute of delay in getting to a patient who's suffering a heart attack the chances of successful resuscitation decrease by ten per cent.)
"There's a national ambulance target of reaching 75 per cent of category A calls - the most serious - within 8 minutes. In the past year the cycle team at Heathrow have reached 100 per cent of those calls within the target time. Using bicycles to reach patients was first tried out at Heathrow in 2004, just at terminal 4. The cycle response team now operates in all 5 terminals.
"They use mountain bikes fitted with sirens and blue lights, and carrying equipment including defibrillators and pain-relieving gas. They can use them to get around quickly inside the terminal buildings and on the tarmac. While some calls turn out to be patients suffering palpitations through fear of flying, or injuries from falling, the use of bicycles does free up ambulances for other potentially life-threatening incidents. And in some cases the cycle paramedics have saved lives."
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~30~RS~)
Comments
Sorry, what is the point of this piece? Is it the phone in subject? I thought this was where we comment on that.
I should hope that the scheme works. Anyone tell us how much NHS money went to set it up? I only ask because where my sister is in hospital (biggish Trust) there have been issues of essential scanner repairs for weeks which have left patients like her being trucked to another hospital for scans to decide on life-saving treatment.
Glad that flight phobics having panic attacks are being helped though.
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Carrie - to comment on the phone in today you need to click on the big blue NHS sign on the page. It's all very confusing, I though exactly the same as you (again).
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Richard:
Thanks for the excellent reportage regarding pushbike paramedics....
=Dennis Junior=
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In response to Carrie, we all know the NHS is underfunded in certain areas, but I would like to point out that the cycle response teams actually save the NHS money!
Do you know how much it costs to dispatch a full operational ambulance for someone who as you put it is having "panic attacks"?
To quote some stats for you relating to LAS (London Ambulance Service) and Cycle Response for a standard year:
"It saved the service £82,000 in motor vehicle dispatch. In terms of personnel hours – the calculation was based on the time taken by a two-person ambulance crew to get to an incident and deal with it, and includes their turnaround time – the saving was 251 hours."
I don't think we should start shooting down money saving strategies for the NHS should we!
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In response to Carrie and backup further what digitalmythic wrote.
The set up and running cost of a paramedic mountain bike is a small fraction of the cost of running a land ambulance. When available emergency ambulance hours are taken out of the service, the response is to either replace those hours (with more ambulances, cost) or lose them (risking patients lives). I believe it probably saved the NHS more than £82,000 a year. There could be contributions from the airport, its great publicity for them.
Also, Heathrow airport is a vast place, i'd imagine an ambulance would have great difficulty is reaching certain places. After that the crew more often than not will have to walk a long way to get to the patient. All this takes time, and each minute in an emergency situation is imperative.
In summary, it saves lives and money. If only all NHS schemes worked the same.
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