Formation | 1977 / 2002 |
---|---|
Type | |
Legal status | Charity |
Headquarters | Aberruthven |
Region | Scotland |
Chairperson | John Pritchard |
Vice Chairperson | Andrew Bayliss |
CEO | Lorna Duff |
Website | basics-scotland |
The British Association for Immediate Care Scotland (BASICS Scotland) is an organisation involved with prehospital care. It has the aims of providing encouragement and aid with the formation of immediate care schemes and to provide training to support those working in prehospital care. It shares its origins with the British Association for Immediate Care (BASICS), which has UK wide coverage. In 1993, the British Association for Immediate Care began running prehospital care courses in Scotland, which were met with a warm welcome and it became clear there was a large audience for such education, [1] especially in remote and rural areas of Scotland. This need for training and organisational leadership became clearer after the 1994 Scotland RAF Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre. This led to the training provided by BASICS to be modified for a more rural setting, and to the development of BASICS Scotland as a separate organisation in 2002.
BASICS Scotland's charitable activities span two distinct areas in relation to prehospital care;
BASICS Scotland originally formed as part of the British Association for Immediate Care, which was established in June 1977. [3] Kenneth Easton, a General Practitioner, was the first chairman of the organisation. [4] Initially it was formed from the existing schemes. The organisation then offered individual membership to doctors that had an interest in immediate care, such as those working in General Practice, Surgery, Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Anaesthesia and Critical Care. Associate membership was open to paramedics and nurses which later again changed to offering full membership recognising the changing roles of these professions.
In 1991, the organisation increased its involvement in educational activities, making available residential courses covering prehospital care and resuscitation. [5] Since then BASICS Scotland has become fully independent from BASICS [6] and has diversified its educational provision across Scotland.
BASICS Scotland responders have received the Queen's Jubilee medals during the last three jubilee celebrations. [7] A number of BASICS Scotland responders and board members have also received honours from Her Majesty the Queen. The MBE has been awarded; in 2013 to John Pritchard, [8] [9] in 2015 to Duncan Tripp, [10] in 2019 to Colville Laird, [11] in 2022 to Dr Cole. [12]
The charity itself has been awarded the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme Bronze and Silver Awards. [13] [14]
BASICS Scotland is an association of health care professionals, who undertake additional training as immediate care practitioners. [2] The members provide their services in support of the statutory or voluntary ambulance services. [15] [16] These responders form part of the pre-hospital elements of the Scottish Trauma Network, in relation to this, they are considered Yellow Level responders, in relation to their scope of practice. BASICS Scotland in coordination with the Sandpiper Trust is also a keen promoter of first aid and emergency prehospital care. [17]
BASICS Scotland responders, many of whom are general practitioners, [18] [19] are able to offer additional skills and resources to the other statutory and voluntary emergency services. [20] [21] Enhanced skills offered by BASICS Scotland responders may include: [22]
BASICS Scotland responders are dispatched by the Scottish Ambulance Service control room, and many responders carry radios or telephones with tracking capabilities to allow control room staff to know when a responder is in close proximity to a 999 incident. These responders are integrated into the pan-Scotland trauma network. [26] Responders who are medical doctors on the General Medical Council register may use emergency green beacons on their car to alert other road users intentions (although such lights do not provide exemptions from road traffic law). [27]
BASICS Scotland responders have been present at many serious incidents across Scotland for many years, including:
BASICS Scotland also provided initial support to the Highland PICT Team, a prehospital enhanced care team working in the North of Scotland. [35] This resource, described as "world class" by a Professor of Rural Health [36] provides a physician and advanced practitioner team which responds to major trauma and medical illness across North Scotland. [37] [38] In light of the "sparsely distributed ambulance resources in the Highlands" [39] and the challenges of distance and adverse weather in the North West of Scotland which hampers aeromedical activities, PICT has a considerable remit beyond major trauma.
PICT provides support to ambulance crews and community responders in medical emergencies, and also provides a "see and treat" service to patients in order to prevent transport and possible hospital admission for problems manageable at home. In this way PICT acts as a senior decision maker for prehospital clinicians across the North of Scotland. The role of the advanced practitioner is to support PICT clinicians in managing trauma and medical emergencies, including blue light driving to attend these calls. ARPs are rostered on duty with PICT, but also respond as an advanced paramedic response car outside the hours of PICT operation. This response provides additional backup to local cardiac arrest incidents, major trauma and other complex emergencies.
The PICT Team currently operates 12 hours per day, and provides a seven-day service year round. Providing a variety of enhanced care services such as pre-hospital ultrasound, cardioversion, sedation and prehospital amputation. The doctor on the PICT Care will also assume the role of the Medical Incident Officer when required at a major incident. [40] Members of the PICT Team have also been invited speakers at a number of medical conferences[ citation needed ].
In 2022, NHS Highland announced they would defund the PICT Team, in steps which will leave the Highlands and Inverness without a seven-day physician-lead enhanced care service. [41] [42] The nearest similar service being over 100 miles drive away in Aberdeen in the form of Emergency Medical Retrieval Service, although that service is primarily for medical retrieval work, rather than responding to 999 calls and providing community medicine to facilitate admission avoidance.
In 2021, BASICS Scotland and the Scottish Ambulance Service ran a medical centre for attendees at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, during October and November 2021. [43] [44]
BASICS Scotland provided doctors, nurses and paramedics to staff the medical centre. The medical centre provided medical care to attendees within the central Blue Zone of the conference. [45] These included advanced nurse practitioners in primary care, a consultant in sports and exercise medicine, general practitioners and critical care doctors. [46]
The medical centre was successful at managing a high percentage of patients at the conference and avoiding unnecessary burdens on surrounding NHS services. Around half of all patients seen had a musculoskeletal problem, [47] many of which were discharged on scene. National Clinical Director of the Scottish Government Jason Leitch and Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care Humza Yousaf both visited the BASICS Scotland staff at the medical centre during the COP26 conference. [48] [44]
BASICS Scotland provides a number of face-to-face [49] and online courses as well as annual conferences. It also has a voice at national level [50] and direct involvement with the work of the Royal College of Surgeons in relation to their Faculty of Prehospital Care. Training provided by the organisation has also included the use of a simulation vehicle to practice extrication of casualties who have been involved in a car crash. [51] The organisations has also delivered bespoke training courses, to audiences such as dental practitioners, individual GP practices, occupational health doctors and nurses, Custody doctors and immigration centre health practitioners. They have also been involved in public health messages related to acute illness and injury. [52] The charity has also worked on developing innovative augmented reality learning resources for teaching prehospital care. [53]
BASICS Scotland holds annual conferences covering a range of topics of interest to those involved in prehospital and rural emergency care. These conferences are usually held in Aviemore, Scotland. In light of the COVID global pandemic, the 2021 conference was held online, focusing on hypothermia. [54]
Conference themes:
BASICS Scotland run a number of courses;
The organisation also produce a suite of podcasts, which included various guest speakers form other emergency services, (such as Police Scotland and HM Coastguard) as well as experts from the College of Remote and Offshore Medicine. These have covered a wide range of topics such as traumatic and paediatric cardiac arrest management, forensic considerations for responders, analgesia and prolonged field care. [73] [74] [75]
BASICS Scotland aims to undertake annual teaching for medical students; having previously taught students from Dundee University, University of St Andrews and University of Central Lancashire. In 2022 a University of Aberdeen medical student worked with BASICS Scotland to produce an academic poster at the EMS2022 conference. [76]
Sandpiper Trust is a charity formed to provide remote and rural medical (and paramedical) practitioners with equipment that would allow them to safely provide high quality immediate care at the scene of an illness or accident. [77] The organisation has also supported leaps forwards in prehospital care in Scotland. [78]
An early benefit of this organisation was the bespoke design of the Sandpiper Bag specifically for rural prehospital care. The Sandpiper Bag is now the recognised standard pre-hospital care equipment in Scotland and is used extensively on the BASICS Scotland courses. It is also the being used on the prehospital Diploma examinations by the Faculty of Prehospital Care, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. [79] Sandpiper Bags have also made their way to Australia with the development of Sandpiper Australia. [80] [81]
Sandpiper Trust has also supplied emergency medication pouches to prehospital volunteer responders. These pouches are made of hardwearing, wipe clean material and contain essential lifesaving medications, allowing responders to undertake effective prehospital care across rural Scotland.
The Sandpiper Trust facilitated the provision of fully updated responders helmets, suitable for multi-modality rescue operations.
Throughout the history of BASICS Scotland there have been a number of individuals, who have been specifically notable for their contributions to prehospital care in Scotland.
Emergency medical services (EMS), also known as ambulance services or paramedic services, are emergency services that provide urgent pre-hospital treatment and stabilisation for serious illness and injuries and transport to definitive care. They may also be known as a first aid squad, FAST squad, emergency squad, ambulance squad, ambulance corps, life squad or by other initialisms such as EMAS or EMARS.
An emergency medical technician is a medical professional that provides emergency medical services. EMTs are most commonly found serving on ambulances and in fire departments in the US and Canada, as full-time and some part-time departments require their firefighters to be EMT certified.
A medical director is a physician who provides guidance and leadership on the use of medicine in a healthcare organization. These include the emergency medical services, hospital departments, blood banks, clinical teaching services, and others. A medical director devises the protocols and guidelines for the clinical staff and evaluates them while they are in use.
A paramedic is a healthcare professional, providing pre-hospital assessment and medical care to people with acute illnesses or injuries. In Canada, the title paramedic generally refers to those who work on land ambulances or air ambulances providing paramedic services. Paramedics are increasingly being utilized in hospitals, emergency rooms, clinics and community health care services by providing care in collaboration with registered nurses, registered/licensed practical nurses and registered respiratory therapists.
The Scottish Ambulance Service is part of NHS Scotland, which serves all of Scotland's population. The Scottish Ambulance Service is governed by a special health board and is funded directly by the Health and Social Care Directorates of the Scottish Government.
Emergency Health Services (EHS) is a branch of the Nova Scotia Department of Health tasked with providing emergency medical services. It is also responsible for transportation of patients between hospitals and medical facilities. At present, all ground ambulance and air ambulance service in Nova Scotia is contracted by EHS to Emergency Medical Care (EMC), a subsidiary of Medavie Health Services.
Emergency medical personnel in the United Kingdom are people engaged in the provision of emergency medical services. This includes paramedics, emergency medical technicians and emergency care assistants. 'Paramedic' is a protected title, strictly regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council, although there is tendency for the public to use this term when referring to any member of ambulance staff.
The British Association for Immediate Care (BASICS) is an organisation which has the stated aim to encourage and aid the formation and extension of immediate care schemes. The British Association for Immediate Care was founded as a charity in 1977 and combines bringing people together who have an interest in pre-hospital immediate care with supporting and promoting regional and local immediate care schemes across the UK.
NHS Highland is one of the fourteen regions of NHS Scotland. Geographically, it is the largest Health Board, covering an area of 32,500 km2 (12,500 sq mi) from Kintyre in the south-west to Caithness in the north-east, serving a population of 320,000 people. In 2016–17 it had an operating budget of £780 million. It provides prehospital care, primary and secondary care services.
The Emergency Medical Retrieval Service (EMRS) is part of ScotSTAR retrieval service. The EMRS provides aeromedical critical care retrieval and pre-hospital care to people in Scotland in the form of two retrieval teams. The service provides patients in remote and rural areas with rapid access to the skills of a consultant or senior doctor in emergency medicine, intensive care medicine or anaesthesia, and facilitates transfers to larger, better equipped urban hospitals. The EMRS functions supplementary to the regular Scottish Ambulance Service Air Ambulance service. Unlike air ambulance services in other parts of the UK, EMRS has no dedicated aircraft but both EMRS North and West are funded by the Scottish Government. The EMRS has featured on the Channel 5 documentary series Highland Emergency, which charts the work of rescue services in the Scottish Highlands.
Lincolnshire Integrated Voluntary Emergency Service, known commonly as LIVES, is a registered charity staffed by volunteers providing pre-hospital care services across Lincolnshire, England. LIVES operates alongside the East Midlands Ambulance Service to provide clinical and critical care skills as well as immediate medical responses in the form of community first responders. LIVES operates under the national pre-hospital care co-ordinating body, the British Association for Immediate Care. LIVES is a registered provider of healthcare with the Care Quality Commission.
Air medical services are the use of aircraft, including both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to provide various kinds of medical care, especially prehospital, emergency and critical care to patients during aeromedical evacuation and rescue operations.
Mercia Accident Rescue Service is a BASICS affiliated charity operation based on providing a fast-response, advanced medical team to back up the emergency services of the English counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The charity aims to provide an organisational framework within which practitioners can be properly trained and equipped to provide prehospital care, its work is supported by local fundraising. MARS is staffed by a team of 11 doctors and two advanced clinical practitioners.
The West Midlands Central Accident, Resuscitation & Emergency (CARE) team is a charitable organisation who respond to serious medical incidents within the West Midlands, UK. Working in teams alongside West Midlands Ambulance Service, volunteer doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals deliver enhanced critical care to seriously injured and unwell patients.
Pre-hospital emergency medicine, also referred to as pre-hospital care, immediate care, or emergency medical services medicine, is a medical subspecialty which focuses on caring for seriously ill or injured patients before they reach hospital, and during emergency transfer to hospital or between hospitals. It may be practised by physicians from various backgrounds such as anaesthesiology, emergency medicine, intensive care medicine and acute medicine, after they have completed initial training in their base specialty.
Scottish Specialist Transport and Retrieval (ScotSTAR) is the Scottish national service for adult, paediatric and neonatal patients. The service is run by the Scottish Ambulance Service and brings together NHS Scotland's three specialist transport and retrieval services: the Scottish Neonatal Transport Service (SNTS), the Transport of Critically Ill and Injured Children Service and the Emergency Medical Retrieval Service (EMRS). The service operates from a bespoke base near Glasgow and expects to be able to cater for 2,200 critically ill children and adults every year.
Sandpiper Trust is a Scottish-based charity whose aims are related to improving pre-hospital immediate care in remote and rural Scotland. It receives no Government, NHS or Local Authority funding. They are a major supporter of BASICS Scotland.
The Prehospital Immediate Care and Trauma (PICT) Team is a prehospital care team which operates from Raigmore Hospital emergency department in Inverness, Scotland. It receives funding from NHS Highland, BASICS Scotland and the Scottish Trauma Network.
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