CRITICALLY ill or injured patients in Kintyre are going to reap the benefits of extra funds announced for the Emergency Medical Retrieval Service (EMRS).
he helicopter-based service was previously provided on a voluntary basis by consultants who work full time in the NHS and give one or two days a week to EMRS, working along with the Scottish Air Ambulance to provide additional skills and expert knowledge on critical care.
This gives patients a better chance of survival by saving time when minutes can mean life or death.
The Scottish Government has given £1.5million to EMRS and now remote areas, including islands like Gigha, Islay and Jura will have the service in emergencies. Rather than being transferred from the island to Campbeltown Hospital, they will be able to go to straight to Glasgow if necessary.
At present on Gigha the ferry is used for any casualties or emergency patients, sometimes being called out in the middle of the night; now the EMRS will be used thanks to the extra cash.
The money has also allowed three more consultants to be hired, who will cover shifts and increase emergency cover for doctors as well as covering their clinical duties.
The service will begin being formally part-funded on Tuesday June 2, with the additional consultants being taken on.
There is a quick turn around with this service as two doctors and one consultant are based at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) helipad waiting for calls and within half-an-hour they aim to be in the air, taking them only 15 minutes to get to Campbeltown.
Once here the crews are able to stabilise patients before taking them away. They also have the expert knowledge to make decisions that the Air Ambulance crews may not be able to make.
EMRS has 15 consultants who work fulltime in the NHS at different hospitals all over Glasgow.
Augmenting this service won’t cost any more than before, because the helicopter would need to be called out anyway; it is just the consultants who will give their time up and who are still providing their skills and expertise voluntarily.
Dr David Stoddart, who is based at the Royal Alexandria Hospital in Paisley is a doctor for EMRS.
He said: ‘The team are providing additional skills in the back of the helicopter and we will still be communicating with the air ambulance crews so we can determine the best possible care for the patient involved.
‘The funding has allowed us to provide this service to more remote areas and expand our existing team to provide more dedicated care.
‘We are able to phone up the GP and discuss the best decision for that person, whether it be for them to stay where they are or for us to come and carry out critical procedures that could save their lives.
‘We work in conjunction with the air ambulance crews to reduce the level of constraints and make the best decisions, whether it would mean they would be quicker to get to that patient or if the weather was too bad for us to get into the area, we are able to provide alternative choices. We can also use the sea king helicopter, or use the plane and fly into Machrihanish.’
