| Prehospital Care in Hampshire - The Current State
Is it right that prehospital medical care in Hampshire relies solely on a charity?
We attend incidents every week at which, without our presence and actions, the patient would have died; this is our real life experience.
Emergency ambulances in Hampshire are not staffed by doctors: the ambulance service relies on the charity BASICS Hampshire. A BASICS doctor is not able to attend every seriously ill or injured person in Hampshire because each one of us works full time for the NHS and has clinical commitments which we cannot leave. Therefore, in Hampshire young people may be dying because of the absence of an appropriately trained and skilled doctor who can attend them immediately. Questions regarding this situation deserve to be asked. Link to evidence for this statement.
Does the whole country suffer from the same lack of statutory prehospital medical care?
This lack of statutory clinical care is not the case throughout Britain. You may be aware of the London air ambulance service (www.londonsairambulance.com). This is a specialist service, which provides skilled
doctors at accident scenes throughout London. During day light hours the service uses a helicopter to get the medical team to the patient’s side as quickly as possible and during the hours of dark the teams use blue light marked cars. The helicopter component of the service is supported by the Virgin group, the doctors are paid by the NHS as part of the Royal London Hospital. This is a very visible and well known community asset within London and played a major role during the London bombings (all of the orange suited doctors seen on television footage were London air ambulance doctors or BASICS doctors).
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