Ambulance UK Feb 2020

NEWSLINE
allowing us to do the very best for
our patients. The opportunity to
expand this work, both ourselves
and with partners, is huge.”
St John Ambulance
Services in East
Midlands rated
‘good’ by CQC
First official rating for the First
Aid Charity
St John Ambulance East Midlands
has received its first rating from
the Quality Care Commission and
was awarded ‘good’.
The rating comes after an inspection
was announced at short notice
in August last year and the CQC
acknowledged improvements that
have been made in the charitable
service since the previous inspection
in 2017. Both the Patient Transport
Service and Emergency & Urgent
Care Service were reviewed, and
both were found to provide safe,
caring, effective and responsive care
to patients.
The ‘well-led’ criterion was found to
be ‘needing improvement’, but the
announcement comes in the middle
of a re-structuring period for St
John Ambulance and the CQC has
acknowledged further improvements
in the five-month period since the
inspection took place.
St John is now implementing
its 2020 business strategy for
ambulance provision and looks
forward to welcoming the CQC
back to see further improvements;
not only in the East Midlands, but
across the country.
St John Ambulance is
exceptionally proud of the work it
does, providing urgent care and
support to communities across
the country. This rating proves that
this work more than meets the
expectations of the independent
regulator of health and social care
in England.
Craig Harman, the National
Ambulance & Community
Response Director at St John
Ambulance comments: “I am
pleased that the CQC found
our leaders to be visible and
approachable and that our
people felt supported, respected
and valued. I was also pleased
that the inspectors witnessed
good care, witnessing our
people speaking to patients with
compassion and kindness. Since
the inspection in August we have
restructured, moving to a national
operational structure. We will use
the feedback provided by the
inspection team to underpin our
new national processes as we
build on the hard work already
carried out by our people and
continuously improve the service
we provide in our communities.
Driving standards across the
independent ambulance sector
and within the event industry is a
key strategic objective for St John
and this CQC report is an excellent
example of the work we are
already doing to help us get there”.
YAS
Helping to boost
the Restart a Heart
campaign in Sri
Lanka
A Yorkshire Ambulance Service
manager, who leads the Restart
a Heart campaign, is heading
to Sri Lanka to help improve
cardiopulmonary resuscitation
(CPR) training across the
country.
Jason Carlyon, senior
engagement lead for Yorkshire
Ambulance Service based in
Wakefield and project manager
for the Resuscitation Council,
has been asked for help by Dr
Nilmini Wijesuriya of the College
of Anaesthesiologists and
Intensivists of Sri Lanka.
The country took part in the World
Restart a Heart campaign for the
first time in 2019 and more than
3,700 people were trained in CPR.
Their first campaign was launched
with support from Jason by
phone, Skype and email and his
advice and input was recognised
by making him a founder member
of the project.
The college is now keen to
develop the campaign to make it
bigger and better in 2020 and has
asked Jason to spend a week in
Sri Lanka to share his knowledge
and experience with colleagues.
Jason will be visiting the capital
city of Colombo at the end of
January and will be teaching
medics how to train others in
CPR as well as providing advice
on how to roll-out the campaign
across the country.
Jason, who lives in Scarborough,
said: “I am absolutely delighted
to be invited to Colombo to
help the college develop this
important work. We have seen
here in Yorkshire how successful
the campaign can be and we are
happy to support more people
to learn this important life-saving
skill with the aim of improving outof-hospital
cardiac arrest survival
rates.”
Dr Wijesuriya
said: “We
look forward
to Jason’s
assistance
with the
development
of this
project, in
order to
raise public
awareness
in bystander
CPR and
also his
expertise to
make World
Restart a
Heart Day
2020 even
more successful.”
On Restart a Heart Day 2019
in Yorkshire more than 860
volunteers provided CPR training
to more than 46,000 students at
163 secondary schools across the
region.
The concept of Restart a Heart
Day was first developed in 2013
by the European Resuscitation
Council. On 16 October 2014,
Yorkshire Ambulance Service
visited 49 schools and taught
CPR to 11,500 youngsters –
with the help of hundreds of
volunteers, mostly off-duty staff
and community first responders.
In 2016 Yorkshire Ambulance
Service supported the roll-out of
the event to all UK ambulance
services and two years later it
was adopted by the International
Liaison Committee on
Resuscitation to encourage mass
CPR training on a global scale
under a World Restart a Heart Day
banner.
The Yorkshire event is sponsored
by the Yorkshire Ambulance
Service Charity and organised in
partnership with the Resuscitation
Council (UK), British Heart
Foundation, St John Ambulance
and other partners.
AMBULANCE UK - FEBRUARY
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