Great Western Air Ambulance attends 'joint busiest week on record'
They were called out to 52 incidents over the bank holiday period at the end of May
Last updated 15th Jun 2024
The Great Western Air Ambulance Charity have dealt with the joint busiest week on record at the end of May.
Half of the 52 call outs saw the helicopter deployed, with the rest in their critical care car.
Over the bank holiday period (27, 28 and 29 May) their crew rushed to help 27 people in need of emergency pre-hospital care, equating to an average of nine people a day over the three-day period.
The daily average for the charity is around five people a day. Sunday was GWAAC’s joint busiest day on record with 13 call-outs.
Both of the vehicles were stocked with specialist kit packed into their new bespoke kit bags, which were funded by the County Air Ambulance's HELP Appeal.
They've thanked everyone who donated to the appeal - which is the only charity in the country dedicated to funding NHS hospital helipads.
Advanced Clinical Practitioner in Critical Care, Vicki Brown, helped spearhead the new kit bags project, which was two years in the making.
Vicki said: “The new bags are speeding up processes, especially setting up kit for pre-hospital emergency anaesthesia (PHEA); they are helping to improve the care we provide to people in our communities in urgent need of our help.”
The 'third generation' kit bags replaced what had been used since 2014, and had evolved to better suit the needs of the crews who use them.
It was decided the older bags needed replacing as they were slowing-up the speed at which they could help patients.
The new bespoke kit bag system contains a series of pouches with everything required for a task in one place, in a modular approach which the charity says makes it easy to use and saves time both on scene and when they are replenished.
The County Air Ambulance HELP Appeal provided much of the funding - raising £20,000 of the £25,000 needed to make the new bags.
The appeal has previously funded the Great Western Air Ambulance Charity's blood-warming machines, enabling crews to perform blood transfusions at the scene of an incident.
The crew needed five sets of bags, one for each of the three critical care cars, one for the helicopter, and one for training purposes - equating to 38 different bags in total and over 160 pouches.
To ensure the bags met the needs of the crew and would last for years to come, they had to be tailor-made as well as being resilient, waterproof, high viz and adaptable.
Robert Bertram, the Chief Executive of the HELP Appeal, said: “We are pleased to have been able to fund these new kit bags for the Great Western Air Ambulance Charity crew.
"The HELP Appeal is focused on saving lives, and the innovative design of these new bags will help GWAAC’s crew deliver the best care to critically ill patients."
You can find out more about the GWAAC and how you can support them on their website.