BASICS Devon provide specialist volunteer immediate care doctors to assist frontline emergency service colleagues when attending medical and trauma emergencies across Devon. The BASICS doctors bring additional skills and experience as well as vital drugs and equipment to emergency situations.
The Coop Community Fund has already supported us enormously and will continue to help our volunteers to share their wealth of knowledge through education and training in vital lifesaving skills. They regularly train together, below are some training photographs: (Some taken before social distancing)
The funding enables our volunteer doctors to attend specialist education and training courses, such as Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine (PHEMS) Emergency Surgical Skills Course that is crucial for our doctors to study, especially when they need to perform lifesaving procedures on location, at a roadside or in a field. It will make a huge difference, especially with incidents such as stabbings on the increase and it will save people’s lives in our community, when seconds count.
The doctors will also be attending an Advanced Life Support or Advanced Paediatric Life Support Course for all 14 of them. They are internationally recognised courses that promote excellence in emergency medicine and inter professional working.
We are also thrilled to have a new responder starting in North Devon, Barnstaple area, Dr Simon Fairclough, and some of the Coop Funding will go towards getting him fully trained and equipped ready to respond.
In 2019, 463 call outs were attended, 144 of those at night, since July 2020 the doctors have responded to 166 call outs arriving first on the scene at 33% of them.
All education and training that the BASICS Devon volunteer doctors’ complete benefits the local community around them and gaining an additional immediate care doctor really will help save lives.