Great Western Ambulance Service - Wiltshire Emergency Services

Wiltshire Emergency Services

Great Western Ambulance Service's Wiltshire branch is a member of the Wiltshire Emergency Services (WES) project, a collaboration of emergency services in Wiltshire. The project has seen the construction of the WES building at Wiltshire Police Headquarters and the relocation of all three emergency services control centres into that one emergency control centre where information is shared instantly between the three. The project has overseen the sharing of stations at Bradford-on-Avon and Mere, and also the sharing of Wiltshire Air Ambulance and the training of Fire and Rescue crews to use defibrillators on occasions when the ambulance service is busy.

GWAS is also supported in Wiltshire by a group of volunteer doctors ('SWIFT Medics') who respond from home, in their own time, to incidents involving seriously sick or injured parients throughout the county. The doctors involved are all either senior GPs or hospital clinicians, who provide their time and expertise for free. The specially trained prehospital care doctors are able to supplement the skills of paramedics and other ambulance staff (for example with advanced decision making, administration of strong painkilling drugs, prehospital anaesthesia and certain surgical procedures normally carried out in hospital). The prehospital care doctor team receive no funding from either the government or GWAS, and rely entirely on charitable donations and fundraising to pay for their drugs, kit and training. All the doctors use their own cars and are permitted to respond with blue lights and sirens (having undergone an intensive three week police driver training course with Wiltshire Police). The team work closely with the Wiltshire Air Ambulance and the GWAS Air Ambulance. Currently SWIFT doctors are tasked to a job either by the Emergency Operations Centre in Devizes or following a direct request from ambulance personnel at the scene of a serious incident.