All of our BASICS medics undertake roles within acute or pre-hospital settings but volunteer their spare time to support our ambulance service at the scene of the most serious 999 calls.
There are two BASICS schemes who support West Midlands Ambulance Service; Mercia Accident Rescue Service (MARS) based in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. and North Staffs BASICS who are based in Staffordshire. There are 30 BASICS responders volunteering for us across the two schemes and last year they responded to more than 400 seriously injured and critical unwell patients across the West Midlands.
BASICS medics respond to 999 calls at the request of West Midlands Ambulance Service, with blue lights and sirens, to deliver hospital care at the scene of the incident. The medics work alongside ambulance staff to bring additional skills, equipment, drugs and surgical procedures to the patient to help save lives and improve patients’ outcomes.
Their range of enhanced care skills include prehospital emergency anaesthetics, sedation, enhanced pain relief, surgical interventions and senior clinical decision making and support to our ambulance crews on scene.
The types of incidents BASICS medics will be requested to attend are those with critically ill patients including those severely injured in car crashes, industrial incidents, shootings and stabbings, through to adult and child cardiac arrests and those others with serious medical problems, such as heart attacks, fits, and breathing problems.
Mark Nash, North Staffs BASICS doctor, is a consultant in anaesthetics and pre hospital care at the University Hospital of North Midlands and has been a volunteer with North Staffordshire BASICS for 20 years. Talking about why he decided to volunteer, Mark said: “I really enjoy the challenging medicine and working environment of pre-hospital care. I wanted to be able to use my in-hospital skills and experience to assist with patient care pre-hospital with the hope we could make some difference to their outcome.
The team work that we see when multiple emergency services work closely together to care for critically ill patients is credit to the challenges that we all face in the pre-hospital environment.
“The team work that we see when multiple emergency services work closely together to care for critically ill patients is credit to the challenges we all face pre-hospital.”