NW Air Ambo - Bear in the air or barely enough assetts ?

[Coconutty]

Hot on the heels of the controversial ( to some ) "Bear In The Air" calendar ( Check out the NWAA Web Site if you haven't got yours yet : North West Air Ambulance - Home (http://www.northwestairambulance.com/index.php) ) ....

.... Rumour has it that the "highly qualified paramedics", who additionally "are operational ambulance staff who have received special additional training in navigation, meteorology, principles of flight, helicopter safety and helicopter evacuation training" may be on the way out, having been told their posts are to be "civilianised" from next April !

Apparantly the exisiting paramedic staff may be able to keep their jobs if they leave the NHS and take a Pay Cut ?? !

So the questions are :

WHY ? - Is this a misconceived idea to save money ?
HOW ? - Who exactly is going to replace them ?
HOW MUCH will it cost to train replacements ?
WHAT will the effect be on the quality of service provided ?

I can understand that the Bear in The Air calendar might not have been too popular amongst some of the senior management but hey ..... :ugh:

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[Bertie Thruster]

Unfortunately air ambulance helicopters do not help the UK ambulance trusts hit their new "call connect" dispatch targets. Extra bods, eg the paramedics normally seconded to man the helicopters, could be used to man extra land vehicles that actually count towards the required call connect stats.

It appears to me that ambulance trust targets are not geared towards actual patient care in any way; the only thing that seems to matter these days is the dispatch response time to the initial call, (how quickly an asset can be dispatched to a caller, even before any medical details of the request are taken)

[capt tosspot]

I think the charity may be looking at other Units such as GNAAS / Kent which directly employ their own medics. Has advantages in that:

They will not be pulled from helo to man a land ambulance (which can be used to meet Govt. 'targets')
They do not have to pay premium to ambulance service for use of paramedics. It has been known for ambulance service to charge overtime rates to charity for use of staff.
They can train and keep medics that want to work on helo rather than those sent to the post.
Medics will not be working nights / dealing with drunks in the street.
They will become very competent helo medics as time goes on.Disadvantages could be:

Poor career prospects due to nature of posts available
Medic skills may fade over time as they only deal with 'helo' jobs.
If charity folds they have to find new job or try and get old one back.
Charity may not offer extras such as pension/ health care etc.
Boredom due to generally low call out rates - say around 2-4 jobs a shift.Overall, I think Charities like to take control of their own staff. They are after all bringing in the money so perhaps would like a say in how it is spent. There are good helicopter crewmembers courses around that can train medics to meet current JAR OPS 3 needs see www.jmaircrewtraining.co.uk (http://www.jmaircrewtraining.co.uk) for example. I should think it would make sense to offer 'privatised' posts to current staff. :rolleyes:

[Coconutty]

No response from anyone in the know yet .....

Capt. Tosspot - I didn't know that about GNAAS / Kent etc -

You make some interesting points relating to advantages and disadvantages.

IF NWAA are looking at that method of operating as an option,
what would happen to the existing highly qualified staff ? - Would they be offered direct employment by the charity on similar terms to their NHS employment ?

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[MightyGem]

I'm sure that their new Ops Manager will get things sorted. :E :E :E

[206 jock]

I think there's a confusion here between 'medics' and 'paramedics'. The ambulance service 'should' pay for paramedics (all Ambulance services and PCT's received a letter from the DoH back in 2002 to say that they should).

However there is an increasing tendency towards AA services employing Pre-hospital care-trained Doctors: as Capt Tosspot says, there are some charities that are now doing so (inc Essex and Herts). In the case of Herts - a recently established service - the Ambulance service didn't fund the paramedics either. The only choice that service had was to pay the ambulance service for the services of three paramedics.

It sounds to me like NWAA are having the same trouble with the local ambulance service: as Bertie said, targets are everything: it's just a pity they don't include patient outcome:ugh:

[fkelly]

Mighty Gem, it looks like you've just confirmed a rumour I'd heard - it just goes to show you really can fool some of the people all of the time :hmm:

[Coconutty]

.... Another rumour - in the same thread :eek:

At least he's got the right Initials for the A.A. job,
and it's not TOO far to travel there from Mersyside ;)

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[jayteeto]

The main office is based in Kirkby Industrial estate, so he has even less distance to travel to work. Resignation letter is in for this job and he starts early in the new year.