GWAAC

A very interesting morning, with a visit to the ground base for the Great Western Air Ambulance Charity. Although I and the Parish Council have been supporters of the charity, funding through grant donation as a thank you for serving our community on at least two occasions in recent years, I came away with a few take-aways I'll pass along - some I knew, and some I didn't.

The charity is exactly that; a charity. The GWAAC receives no government funding but relies upon donations. 

The term ambulance is a misnomer, as they very rarely use their infrastructure for transporting patients. Rather, the helicopter and other vehicles are fully kitted and and manned as mobile emergency units capable for giving immediate on the scene critical care including anaesthetic, intubation, open heart surgery, temperature control, blood transfusion and other patient stabilisation while ground units can arrive to take the patient to hospital.

Their non-flight staff are not simply paramedics (great though those folk are) but the units are manned by ICU doctors and medical technicians able to carry out field operations that otherwise would have to wait until the patient was taken to hospital. They carry whole blood stocks (O- universal donor) held at 4ºC and blood warming kits to raise it to body temperature in seconds.

As a charity and a unit that is smaller than the NHS, it is able to afford smaller, more highly engineered medical solutions that would be unfeasible to stock in every NHS ambulance or paramedic.

It was not the best of days weather-wise for a visit, and we never expected to see the helicopter fly (let alone get a ride!), but as we left the police helicopter that also garages there took to the skies. Fun for someone...

https://greatwesternairambulance.com/