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West Midlands Ambulance Service 10,000 Lifesavers Trained By Ambulance Service West Midlands Ambulance Service will have trained 10,000 people in Staffordshire in the lifesaving HeartStart course by the end of this week (19th July). This huge milestone for the project will be reached as ambulance staff and volunteer HeartStart instructors train 500 children at Walton Priory Middle School in Stone throughout the week. On the 1st April last year the service embarked on the five year HeartStart project, aiming to train basic life support skills to 60,000 people within the County. Over the last 15 months an average of 21 people every single day have been trained in how to save a life. The project has gone from strength to strength and many more courses are already planned for the forthcoming months. The free two hour British Heart Foundation courses are suitable for anyone from the age of ten years old and up and cover various lifesaving and first aid techniques including CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), the management of severe bleeding, loss of consciousness, chocking and chest pain. Matt Heward, Community Response Manager said: “The Trust is absolutely thrilled by the response for these courses. The service believes it is extremely important to increase the public’s understanding of what they should do in a medical emergency. “Holding these free courses, which are open to all, has provided the public with the skills, confidence and a better understanding of what they should do in such an emergency which really could help to save lives. “One of the main aims of the project was to concentrate on getting schools involved and providing children with lifesaving skills at a young age. “The children at Walton Priory Middle School and other schools around the county have been excellent, engaging fully with all the activities and learning these vital skills in a familiar environment. It has also provided the ambulance service with the opportunity to reduce any fears that the children may have had, reassuring them that should they ever need an ambulance that we are here to help.” “I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been involved in making this project a success so far, from the dedicated HeartStart team and volunteer trainers, who have put in tireless efforts, to the public for proactively supporting the project and taking part in the course.”.
Trust Welcomes Report
West Midlands Ambulance Service is welcoming the Health Select Committee report into emergency and urgent care saying it highlights the growing importance the ambulance service can make in ensuring patients get the right treatment, in the right place and at the right time. The report notes that ambulance services around the country have evolved in recent years so that they now take care to the patient rather than simply taking the patient to care. WMAS Trust Chief Executive, Anthony Marsh, gave evidence to the committee in June. He said: “A key part of the change is the way in which we are upskilling our staff so that they can treat many more patients there and then, rather than have to transport them to an A&E Department. “For WMAS, we have been rapidly increasing the number of paramedics we have so that soon, 70% of our frontline workforce will be made up of paramedics; the highest percentage in the country. This means that there will be one of every emergency vehicle we operate. “In addition, we are training hundreds of our staff to an advanced paramedic level giving them more skills and the ability to treat more patients. For example, the advanced paramedics can now identify if a patient has a urinary infection. This has stopped literally hundreds of patients being taken to A&E. Equally, they can glue lacerations, which again avoids many patients having to be taken to hospital. “By treating more patients at the scene, it means we are able to target our ambulances on getting critically ill and injured patients, who have conditions such as a heart attack, a stroke or have
22 | On The Bell
suffered a serious traumatic injury, to the specialist care they need in hospital, even more quickly than we do currently. “I must pay tribute to the tremendous work ethic of our staff who have embraced the fundamental changes that we have been introducing over recent years. Many have pushed themselves extremely hard through the likes of university courses so that they can learn the skills necessary to improve the care we provide to patients. I know from speaking to them the benefits that the patients get, but also the sense of achievement that the staff feel at learning the new skills. “Although there are lots of good things within the report, we recognise that we cannot be complacent. We are committed to working with partners within the healthcare economy to make further improvements. “This joint working has already resulted in a dramatic improvement in the amount of time it takes to hand patients over to hospital staff at A&E Departments. Delays have been almost completely wiped out, which is not necessarily the case in all areas of the country. “We now want to take the level of care we provide to the next level. Through joint working between hospitals, commissioners and ourselves, we have seen tremendous improvements to the care provided to heart attack, stroke and trauma patients. We believe that we can develop this further through joint working to other areas of care. “We recognise that there are still challenges ahead, but fully support the call for closer partnership working to improve the care provided to patients at every level.”