Thames Valley Air Ambulance prepare for busy New Year's Eve
Critical care teams will use rapid response vehicles for those in need of urgent care
A doctor with Thames Valley Air Ambulance says New Year's Eve can be 'pretty busy'.
Suzy Stokes will be on duty with her colleagues ready to use a rapid response vehicle to reach anyone who is critically ill across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
Suzy told us:
"it can be pretty busy as you can imagine. So obviously a lot of people plan parties and get togethers and fun events and things which don't always go to plan. There's sometimes alcohol involved and fireworks but also like many of the nights throughout the year, people also just have their have medical problems and heart problems and strokes and other things that go on during the rest of the year, just because it's New Year's Eve doesn't necessarily change that, but there's definitely an added number of celebration related events shall we say."
The air ambulance helicopter doesn't fly in the dark and so critical care rapid response vehicles are used instead, but Suzy says they're just as well-equipped:
"So we carry everything that the helicopter carries. The only thing we can't do is convey a patient. So a land ambulance would come with us as well. But on board we have. We basically bring the hospital to the patient. We have blood which we can transfuse. We have medications. We have something called a Lucas device which provides mechanical CPR in the event that someone's heart has stopped, we have a ventilator and breathing tubes. We have equipment specifically for children and for pregnant women. Yeah, and that's all in the back of our car. And with some very sophisticated monitors as well, so that we can monitor people very closely whilst we transport them to hospital."
CPR
One of the most common call outs are cardiac arrests and Suzy says it's vital people demonstrate 'courage' and step forward to use CPR:
"It's absolutely critical without what we call bystander CPR, so people who were there at the time that the person collapses and their heart stops, what what we can offer is a lot less useful further down the line because they have to have someone doing CPR when their heart stops. I think a lot of people are naturally afraid that they might be doing it wrong.
"You might be doing it and maybe the person's heart hasn't stopped and therefore they feel nervous to start or nervous to carry on. But one thing I can assure you is if someone doesn't need it, they'll push you off and secondly that the 999 call handler will talk you through it step by step.
"We know that survival increases if bystander CPR takes place and if people go and look for a public access defibrillator or AED that are usually located on things like pubs, churches, sports halls, schools, things like that, to get a defibrillator to someone as soon as possible. I've been to patients whose hearts have been stopped for a long period of time, but because people have the guts to start CPR immediately and get that defibrillator on them, they walked out of hospital completely normally."
Thames Valley Air Ambulance needs more than ten million pounds a year to operate and as a charity they depend on the public's generosity.