Critical Care Cars œhile our helicopters were oÿ ine, our two new Critical Care Cars have made a vital contribution to maintaining our operations, enabling us to still get our highly skilled clinicians to the patients who needed them most - by road

A New resilience...

Our new Critical Care Cars added a level of fl eƻibility to our service – ģust when we needed it most!

You may remember in Spring Helipad we welcomed our two new Critical Care Cars to Devon Air Ambulance. They came into service in February and were introduced to build in resilience to our service and support the enhanced critical care we can deliver across the county. Our cars off er a safe and speedy way to respond to patients if our helicopters are oÿ ine due to poor weather or when they were away for maintenance or servicing.

As the true impact of Coronavirus became clear, and we tooĩ the very diþ cult decision to temporarily stop ā ying while we put in place measures to protect our patients and crew from the virus, our two cars became absolutely vital to our service. Having them available meant we could still deliver our clinical teams to our patients when they urgently needed the enhanced level of critical care that we provide.

As more people will have seen our Critical Care Cars out on the road since that time, we thought it would be good to take a more in-depth look at them and the vital role they played during these unprecedented times.

Our Critical Care Cars

There are several different makes of cars which can be adapted – also known as ‘blue light’ conversion – specifically for the emergency services. At the start of the process, in order to select the right car we spent some time looking at the order to select the right car we spent some time looking at the different models available, learning from the experience of other services that use critical care cars and considering these other services that use critical care cars and considering these against our local needs. This led us to choose the Volvo XC90 against our local needs. This led us to choose the Volvo XC90 as the best cars for our service in Devon. Our Volvo XC90’s have a high-performance powerful hybrid Our Volvo XC90’s have a high-performance powerful hybrid engine which offers good handling at speeds over rough road surfaces and, because they are 4-wheel drive, they can road surfaces and, because they are 4-wheel drive, they can take us safely off-road and into the Devon countryside when take us safely off-road and into the Devon countryside when needed. This car also has lots of space, both in terms of roomy needed. This car also has lots of space, both in terms of roomy seating for up to three clinicians on duty (two paramedics or seating for up to three clinicians on duty (two paramedics or two paramedics and a doctor) in addition to a very large boot two paramedics and a doctor) in addition to a very large boot

for all their kit and medical equipment. The generous storage space also means we have some spare capacity as new equipment or kit might be required. This is particularly useful at the moment as the crew need to carry supplies of both Level 2 and Level 3 PPE to wear when assisting patients. As part of the development of our cars, our paramedics have also undertaken Level 3 Ambulance Response training, also known as ‘blue light’ training, to provide them with the skills to drive the cars safely, at speed, to reach our patients in their time of need.

What equipment do we carry?

We carry exactly the same advanced medical equipment in the Critical Care Cars as we carry in the helicopter, so we can deliver exactly the same level of advanced medical treatments to our patients at scene. This includes clinical equipment such as ventilators and our blood plasma product LyoPlas which enables our crew to treat patients who have suffered severe blood loss.

How do we use the Critical Care Cars?

Our cars are primarily located at each airbase which means our crews are quick to respond if either of our helicopters is offline. On occasion, it may actually be quicker for our team to reach a patient by road rather than by air if the incident happens near to the airbase. The needs of the patient drives everything we do, and the crew will make these time-critical decisions based on a number of factors such as patient condition and location, access, proximity to the specialist treatment centre the patient’s reported condition might require and what other emergency resources are responding to the patient. Our cars are deployed by the same specially trained Helicopter Emergency Medical Service dispatchers who can identify the patients who are most likely in need of the advanced treatments and interventions our team can provide. Just like our helicopters have specialist aviation GPS navigation systems, our cars use a similar system designed for emergency services, which is particularly useful when guiding us across the extensive and busy road network in Devon. Again, just like in the helicopters, the clinician in the passenger seat is able to communicate and liaise with other emergency services while en-route to the incident. Where we have advance notice that the aircraft won’t be available, such as when it is in Oxford for its annual maintenance, we are able to locate our cars at strategic locations around the county. Using historical data of the incidents we have attended, alongside that of the ambulance service, we are able to identify which towns, villages or major road junctions to position our cars so they are best placed to respond when needed to the most likely predicted location. When we took the really difficult decision earlier in the year to stand our helicopters down, we were able to use this data to locate our cars at major road junctions near Barnstaple, Exeter, Teignbridge and the South Hams, reducing the time it took from when the 999 call was made to reaching the

patient. During the time we weren’t flying due to Coronavirus, we were extremely grateful to Kastners, our local Volvo dealer based in Exeter, who offered to loan us an additional critical care car to temporarily enhance our fleet and give us even more road coverage across the county.

the future

While Devon Air Ambulance is a helicopter-led emergency service, it is clear that our Critical Care Cars have enabled us to enhance the service we can provide in Devon. Since coming online in February, we have completed over 100 missions using these cars, which has already demonstrated the huge benefit they can bring to our communities.