Our impact | February 2024

The evenings may be starting to get lighter, but during February a total of 33 missions took place at night, when our pilots need to use specialised night vision goggles.

Swindon was the most visited during February, with 17 missions taking place in the area. Second to this, our crew attended 12 missions in the city of Bath and eight missions in Chippenham.

We attended 33 missions with pre-hospital doctors on board. Pre-hospital doctors are able to help the team make advanced decisions on scene and administer alternative medications that critical care paramedics are unable to deliver.

We performed eight patient transfers to our region’s hospitals, both Royal United Hospital in Bath and Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

Of the 97 missions our aircrew attended, 26 were cardiac emergencies, 16 falls and 11 incidents involved children.

The crew are often called upon to perform surgical procedures, deliver blood transfusions and administer pre-hospital emergency anaesthesia at the scene of an incident.

During February, five patients needed pre-hospital emergency anaesthesia, which is a vital yet high-risk intervention. It is used to gain rapid control of a patient’s physiology following serious traumatic or medical incidents. 

There were two patients who required blood transfusions on scene before being transferred to hospital. We carry two units of O Negative red blood cells, two units of O Positive red blood cells and four units of plasma on board our helicopter and critical care cars.

Our aircrew supported 13 patients with advanced airway management, and on 11 occasions the team used the LUCAS machine to deliver CPR.