NEARLY a third of all air ambulance calls are due to road traffic collisions.
The charity covers Warwickshire and Northamptonshire and says it can be at the scene of a crash within minutes by helicopter or critical care car.
Critical Care paramedic and base manager Karl Bexon said: “Scene safety for everyone is always the priority – if we are at a motorway incident, we have to ensure we have a safe working area with lane closures. On more rural roads, we must ensure the roads are completely closed to create a safe working environment for all the emergency services.
“Depending on the severity of the patient’s condition, our clinicians will decide on the priority of the interventions required. After the initial patient assessment, injuries will be splinted, pain relief administered – and if the patients are severely injured – they will be anaesthetised at the roadside to secure their airway, and control breathing and circulation. Once stabilised the patients will then be transported to the most suitable hospital for their injuries.”
Nigel Turner from Warwickshire suffered life-threatening injuries when his car – which was stationary at the time – was hit by a van travelling at 60 miles an hour.
He said: “I was lucky that when I was injured in a road traffic collision the speedy response of the local air ambulance made a huge difference to my recovery. The critical care doctor and paramedic arrived at the scene quickly, anaesthetised me, and I was flown to the nearest major trauma hospital for the treatment I needed. If this had not happened things could be very different now.”
Visit www.theairambulanceservice.org.uk or call 0300 3045 999 for more information about the charity.
