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The UK helicopter ambulance tasking study
Nicola Littlewood1, Andrew Parker, Stephen Hearns
1Royal Alexandra Hospital, Corsebar Road, Paisley PA2 9PN, United Kingdom.
Introduction:
Helicopter ambulances are a scarce and expensive resource and their use carries significant risk for crew and patients.
Aims:
To establish and compare the tasking criteria, dispatch arrangements and crew configuration for all helicopter ambulance services in the United Kingdom.
Methods:
Structured telephone interview of all helicopter ambulance services in the United Kingdom.
Results:
Replies were received from all 16 UK air ambulance services. Crew configuration varies between services. Nine services had paramedic only crew, 3 had physician/paramedic crew and 4 had a paramedic crew with variable physician input. Only 2 of the 16 services used a paramedic in the dispatch process. There were 67 different tasking criteria used for air ambulance dispatch across all air ambulances with a range from 4 to 23 for individual air ambulance services.
Conclusion:
Given the financial burden and physical risk of air ambulance use, there should be a more standardised approach to the tasking, dispatch and crew configuration of air ambulances in the UK.
