Northern Ireland Ambulance Service
The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) is the ambulance service that serves the whole of Northern Ireland. As with other ambulance services in the United Kingdom, it does not charge its patients directly for its services, but instead receives funding through general taxation. It responds to medical emergencies in Northern Ireland with the 300 plus ambulance vehicles at its disposal. These 300 vehicles, includes mini-buses, ambulance officer's cars and some support vehicle's, RRV's and some accident and emergency ambulances.
The Service employs approximately 1,100 staff based across 57 stations & sub-stations, 2 Control Centres and a Regional Training Centre. It responds to approximately 120,000 emergency (999) calls per year with a combination of traditional emergency ambulances with two crew members, and Rapid Response Vehicles (RRVs) crewed by a single paramedic.
In addition to the emergency service, NIAS has a fleet of Patient Care Service vehicles which are used for more routine patient transport to/from hospital, inter-hospital patient transfers and increasingly for GP urgent admissions to hospital. Within the Patient Care Service there are both single-crewed 'sitting case' (minibus) vehicles as well as double-crewed 'intermediate care vehicles' (ICV) which carry a stretcher.
Read more about Northern Ireland Ambulance Service: History, See Also
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