Bristol air ambulance donations plea
It costs about £1.3 million a year to run the critical care service, which attends to the most serious emergencies in the former Avon area and beyond.
Unlike traditional air ambulance services, the team does not just perform basic first-aid, pick up patients and then fly them to the nearest hospital.
Instead, they transport emergency doctors and specialist paramedics to the scene of incidents so that they can either treat patients immediately, provide pain relief, stabilise them with the help of anaesthetic or sedation where necessary, and help monitor them while they are transported to the most appropriate hospital for their needs.
And that involves a large range of equipment, including monitors similar to those used in intensive care units so that the team can diagnose and treat patients appropriately.
Great Western Ambulance Service pays for the critical care paramedics who work on the unit, but most of the doctors are volunteers who carry out the duty in their own time.
It also pays for drugs and the cars the team currently uses.
But much of the hi-tech equipment that the crew relies on is on loan from the manufacturers and could be taken away at any point. They hope to buy their own equipment before that happens so the service they provide is not affected.
Air operations manager, Danny Hopkins, said: "The kit we are looking at here is the most expensive stuff.
"We are using intensive care level monitoring at the side of the road.
"It is vitally important that if we are assisting a patient we monitor exactly what is going on with that person as they would do in an intensive treatment unit. We have the same monitoring but it's portable, and that obviously comes at a price.
"Without the equipment our skills are useless."
Before the paramedics and doctors even start running out of their base to jump into their helicopter for an emergency mission, they have racked up a fair bill.
It costs the organisation more than £2,000 to ensure each member of the team is appropriately dressed in a flight suit, jacket, boots and helmet.
The nature of incidents attended by GWAA means that they require hi-tech equipment seen in intensive care units, but this needs to be mobile so that they can use it on the road to monitor the heart rate and oxygen levels of patients they are transporting to hospital.
The flying service runs five days a week, but once there is enough money the helicopter will operate every day.
When the team doesn't operate by air it attends incidents by car, so doctors can use their skills to help patients 24 hours a day. And with three cars and a helicopter that need to be fully kitted out, GWAA requires four sets of equipment, as well as nine rucksacks, including reserves.
Mr Hopkins said: "The cars do just as good a job as the helicopter and we need more funding so we can expand our team to seven days a week and up to 24 hours a day. They do have that capability, even if they are only on call. In the last few weeks many of the most urgent jobs we have attended have been at night or when the aircraft has been offline due to weather."
Among the items that GWAA needs to buy are either the Propaq or Dashcorr monitors so the crew can check the heart rate, oxygen levels, blood pressure and breathing of a patient.
There are already adult and child ventilators to help the patients breathe but, ideally, the charity would like to purchase a baby ventilator. Four adult monitors are needed and at least two, but ideally four, for youngsters.
The team carries out chest drains, which require suction equipment if a patient is vomiting or there is a lot of blood coming out of the area where they are working. They carry defibrillators to re-start the heart and to monitor its output after cardiac arrests, or when a heart attack has been suspected.
The Nonin hand-held monitor is used to check carbon dioxide and oxygen levels within the blood, and for broken thigh bones, the Sager traction is used.
Mr Hopkins said: "We went to the manufacturers and suppliers and told them we were setting up and asked for help in the short-term and got the demonstration Dash model but that is due to be sold at some point and we will have nothing.
"We have had it since we launched and it is getting to the point where we need to do something about it or we will lose it."
With a team of 20 paramedics and doctors, each one of them needs their own kit, including helmet, boots and flight suits.
The aircraft is leased from Bond Air Services for £60,000 a month, including a pilot and ground maintenance engineer, maintenance and upgrades, and there are monthly flying hours charges based on actual aircraft movements, which average out at £16,000 per month.
In total the cost of travelling to each call by helicopter is about £15 a minute per flight.
Any businesses, organisations or individuals who can help out are encouraged to sponsor an item of the critical care team's kit that will then be taken out on the road and used to treat seriously ill or injured patients.
GWAA will then arrange for labels to be placed on the relevant items to acknowledge that they have been paid for by those people.
It would even be possible to sponsor a whole critical care paramedic or doctor's uniform or one of the bags they carry.
The list GWAA has provided for the Post is not exhaustive and there are smaller, but necessary items that could be sponsored to help the team carry out its lifesaving service.
"If people don't get behind us we don't fly, and we can't deliver the service and I think we have proved over the last eight months that the service is needed," said Mr Hopkins.
"We are not asking people to give £10,000 to £15,000 of their own money, but every little bit helps, even if it is only £2 or £3. If everyone gave that it would allow us to buy bits of kit. We need those small donations as much as sponsorship for kit."
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