Ambulance

Focus on Scottish Ambulance Service
Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest –
Scotland’s Story
“Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: A Strategy for Scotland” was launched by the Minister for Public Health
at the Scottish Cardiac Arrest Symposium on 27 March 2015. The strategy was produced by a broad
coalition of stakeholders and sets out a commitment to improve outcomes after out-of-hospital cardiac
arrest and an ambition that by 2020 Scotland will be an international leader in the management of
OHCA.
The strategy aims to increase survival rates
after OHCA by 10% across the country
within five years. Reaching this level of
performance would mean around 300
more lives being saved every year resulting
in a total of 1,000 additional lives saved by
2020. Increasing the incidence of bystander
CPR is the cornerstone of improving
outcomes because it can increase the
likelihood of survival after OHCA by 2 or
3 times. The strategy included the goal of
equipping an additional 500,000 people
with CPR skills by 2020.
Across Scotland around 3,500 patients
undergo attempted resuscitation each
year after OHCA making it a significant
healthcare challenge. European centres
with the best survival rates return almost
a quarter of OHCA victims home alive
but in Scotland in 2013/14 around 1 in
20 survived to hospital discharge with
considerable variation in different parts of
the country.
In many centres around the world, including
Scotland, initiatives to improve OHCA
outcomes have been implemented at city
level with dramatic results. Our challenge
was to put in place the world’s first national
programme. The key was nationwide multisector
engagement including Emergency
Services (Scottish Ambulance Service,
Scottish Fire and Rescue and Police
Scotland), key third sector organisations
(including British Heart Foundation, Chest
Heart and Stroke Scotland, St Andrews
Ambulance, British Red Cross), and
academic partners (The Resuscitation
Research Group at the University of
Edinburgh) and many others. We brought
together both policy-makers and those at
the cutting edge of operational delivery to
make a difference to both delivery of care
and patient outcomes.
Edinburgh University’s Resuscitation
Research Group helped us adapt the best
evidence and inform decision-making to
finalise the strategic aims. We learnt from
Spring 2016 | Ambulancetoday
patients, academics, healthcare workers,
public services, and the third sector and
built on good practice from around the
world. A patient story film provides vivid
evidence of the impact of increasing
survival rate on patients and families.
One patient’s story:
“It’s Not Just A Theory“
https://vimeo.com/123213458
A steering group with senior decision
makers from a broad range of partner
Biography:
Paul Gowens, FCPara, MSc. PGCert.
DipIMC, RCSEd. AASI. MCMI
Scottish Ambulance Service
Paul is a Health Foundation
Fellow and currently
undertaking a secondment
to the Scottish Government,
Health and Social Care
Directorate as a national
clinical advisor with portfolio
including, out of hospital cardiac arrest and
major trauma systems. With over twentyfive
years of experience within the Scottish
Ambulance Service Paul has fulfilled a number
of key roles from a HEMS paramedic through
to his current strategic role at Scottish
Government.
Biography:
Karen McNee, Policy Analyst, Planning
and Quality Division,
Scottish Government
Karen is a senior policy
analyst working on health
and innovation in the
Strategic Planning and
Clinical Priorities team within
Scottish Government Health
Directorates where she has
been since 2013.
Karen began her career in the Scottish
Government in the late 1980s and has
worked in a number of Departments as a
social researcher. She has spent the last 9
years working in Scottish Government Health
Directorates; 7 years as head of the Public
Health and Sport Team within Health Analytical
Services Division before moving to her current
policy post. She is policy lead for Out of
Hospital Cardiac Arrest.
organisations supported the team and
enabled the input of key stakeholders as
the strategy developed.
At the launch of the strategy the team
actively used social media to publicise the
event, generating 5,000 tweets and creating
3 million impressions. Scotland’s strategy for
Biography:
Lisa MacInnes, BSc (Hons), MSc,
RGN, AFHEA
Save a Life for Scotland
Lisa is a nurse and member
of the Resuscitation Research
Group in Edinburgh She
has a passion for research,
education and training
previously holding a teaching
fellow role within medical
education before joining RRG to lead on a
CHSS project (live video streaming to augment
decision making in COPD and OHCA). She is
the National Programme Manager for Save a
Life for Scotland.
Biography:
Dr Gareth Clegg,
Resuscitation Research Group
Gareth Clegg trained in
Emergency Medicine in
Edinburgh having completed
undergraduate degrees in
Medicine and Psychology. He
started research work early
in the course of EM training -
initially looking with Professor Colin Robertson
at whether the ventricular fibrillation ECG
waveform could be used to guide real time
resuscitation of patients in cardiac arrest.
Gareth is co-founder of the Emergency
Medicine Research Group in Edinburgh
(EMERGE) and leads the Resuscitation
Research Group, a collaborative involving
Edinburgh University, the Scottish Ambulance
Service and NHS Lothian. Research interests
include the physiology and clinical management
of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, non-technical
skills in time critical resuscitation, and the
physiology of fluid resuscitation. The group
coordinates the TOPCAT2 project and 3RU
team along with a range of other projects
relating to all elements of the OHCA response
‘system’ summarised in the Chain of Survival.
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