Community First Responders

A Community Responder (or First Responder) scheme is made up of a group of volunteers who operate within the community in which they live or work and have been trained to attend emergency calls received by the NHS Ambulance Service, providing vital care and First Aid until an Emergency Ambulance arrives.

In an ideal world, there would be an ambulance on every street corner, equipped with a trauma team and a working Operating Theatre. In the real world, however, it is uneconomic to have enough ambulances to cover all the peak demands and although the Control and Despatch department do their best with the budgets available, there will inevitably be delays if several calls come in at once.

Now consider this. If you have a medical emergency (we're not talking about broken nails or lovers' tiffs - and believe me, people will call 999/911 for all sorts of reasons) - no, we're talking about unconscious people, a fit, diabetic emergency, Strokes, Heart Attacks and, of course Cardiac Arrests *.

In these situations, copious Oxygen and, for a Cardiac Arrest, a Defibrillator are the Order of the day and the sooner the better.

If you realise that from someone's heart stopping, every minute before a defibrillator is applied will result in about a 10-20% less chance of survival, then you can see that an ambulance arriving in 8-10 minutes is going to have its work cut out.

Enter the Community Responder. We work or live locally and Ambulance Control will activate us at the same time as the ambulance. As we live/work locally we stand a good chance of arriving first and can commence treatment. When the Ambulance arrives, we continue to work with them and the crew will carry on from where we have got to.

We carry Oxygen, a defibrillator, airways (plastic tubes to stop the tongue blocking the throat), a bag and mask (to inflate the lungs with oxygen) and some other bits and pieces. Here most life-threatening stuff is fair game except for Road Traffic Crashes (too dangerous for us), Maternity and anyone under the age of 8. We don't have blue lights, we don't have sirens and we're not allowed to break any laws getting to a casualty. Even so, we usually get there first in about half the cases and there are (currently) three people in our County alive because a Community Responder shocked their Cardiac Arrest back into a viable rhythm before the ambulance arrived.

In about 300 incidents of which about 20 were Cardiac Arrests, I have so far not managed to revive anyone for longer than a few hours. On the other hand, a few hours is enough time for some relatives to visit them in hospital for one last time, so personally I class that as a small success. In many other cases, the fact that I have been there first and been able to provide perhaps little more than TLC and Oxygen will still go a long way to helping the recovery.

You can find out more about the scheme that I am involved with here and on the links page you will find many more schemes across the UK.

Looking for a new hobby? Want to give something back to the Community? Why not give it a go? It's only about a weekend or 2 of training and then as many or as few hours as you want to give.

Drop me a line if you want to know more and I'll try to answer as best I can - but cannot talk about specific cases for obvious reasons. There is a list of FAQs here to start you off. If you have a question that is not covered, then please contact me.

* The heart is a muscle and has its own blood supply via Coronary Arteries. A Heart Attack is where a Coronary artery gets narrowed or blocked and an area of the heart muscles is deprived of oxygen. A Cardiac Arrest is where the heart actually stops - for example a worsening of a heart attack, or for other reasons e.g. electric shock.

A Defibrillator momentarily stops the heart's electrical activity in the hope that it will regroup & start beating regularly again.

When you think of Emergency Services, you will usually associate Blue lights with them. Certainly in the UK at any rate although red lights are often used elsewhere as well.

We're trying to get to someone who is in urgent need of Oxygen or a Defibrillator where minutes and seconds count, so if we had blue lights to help us get through the traffic this has got to help, right?

Wrong, and for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the vast majority of cases we attend to are not life-threatening. Chest Pain can have a number of causes, Breathing difficulties can have various causes but whilst they are just that, a few seconds or minutes either way are unlikely to make the difference.

Professional Emergency drivers undertake a 4-week driving course. There is additional training for rapid response cars and Police Drivers go through several courses to qualify. All this takes time, money and practice...and more practice. These people do it for a living day in, day out. I live in a busy, populous Town and even so only get a couple of call-outs a week. Professionals are working constantly and are psyched up for a call. Me, I'm slumped in front of the television watching Jeremy Clarkson espouse his views on Left wing Liberal Lentil munchers. If a call comes along, my adrenaline (Epinephrine) levels rocket as I take down the details, get kitted out and work out where I'm going. This could be my first call for two weeks. I could be the first on scene dealing with whatever has been thrown at me. Am I really in the right frame of mind to be forcing my way through traffic?

If I hit something or, worse, someone, then I am out of action, as is another Ambulance as it has to divert to attend to me and my 'victims'. Not only that, the blue light driving and the exemptions from certain Traffic Laws granted to the Pros are privileges and if I (as a Professional or a Community Responder) am found to be in the wrong, then the Law will come down much harder on me than it would otherwise would.

If you also look at the additional insurance premium that you will have to pay to use blue lights then you will see that it is not worth the grief.

"What about Green lights?" I hear you say. Green lights are used by Doctors on call, but again the majority will not use them and the lights still do not confer additional driving exemptions (being allowed to use Blue or Green lights & being allowed to exempt yourself from certain traffic laws are independent of each other, although, obviously, usually granted for the same purpose)

So there you have it, we 'drive to arrive' at a safe driving speed, obeying all applicable Traffic Laws, park up safely and deal with the incident. At the end of the day, we are supernumerary to the Ambulance (one is always sent and we cannot stand it down) and it's not a race.

Anyone who becomes a Responder hoping to get blue lights and being able to break the speed limit are in it for the wrong reasons and need to be weeded out before they harm someone.

Finally, on a lighter (hah!) note, this topic does get the Professionals (justifiably) worked up as it is an issue that keeps cropping up with new or wannabee Responders. I wrote a spoof News Bulletin for April Fools Day about this topic. Check out the link in the 'Links' section.

* Update *
I have received a few comments regarding the usage of Blue Lights by Responders. Some may be genuine, some may be trolls.

Either way, this is not the place for discussion - a Forum is more suited to this, so please air your views on one of the ones linked to below.

From the website:
"Our vision is of a world in which people do not die prematurely of heart disease.

We'll achieve this through pioneering research, vital prevention activity and ensuring quality care and support for everyone living with heart disease."

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) exists to reduce the incidence of heart disease in the population by educating people on how to look after their heart, by developing research in to the causes and prevention of heart disease and, of course, treatment via the use of a defibrillator.

The Heartstart programme teaches anyone the basics of emergency resuscitation over a 2 hour course. More than 1.2 Million people have been trained in schools and in the Community, many by volunteer Trainers giving up their free time to run the courses.

The BHF works with the Government on the National Defibrillator programme. This is an ongoing programme.

The first phase was putting Defibrillators in public places such as airports and railway stations, then training the staff to use them.

Phase two is Community responders. Training Lay/volunteer public to use a defibrillator and assisting them in setting up a scheme.

Looking to the future, other options are being considered. For example, the defibrillators in Public places can only be operated by the local staff. If a Community Responder or ambulance worker happened to be there whilst not working he or she would not be able to use it. One option might be to give trained users a swipe card that they could use to open the cabinet and deploy the defibrillator - any time, any place, anywhere.

Research goes on and the need to reduce the time from a Cardiac Arrest to the deployment of a defibrillator will always be with us.

You can help by becoming a Community Responder or attending a Heartstart course. You can try and reduce the chances of you having a Heart Attack or Stroke by lifestyle changes. You can also help out the BHF by volunteering some of your free time, donating or purchasing anything from a beach towel to crockery to gifts and cards. Whatever you buy will raise funds for the BHF, so check out the gift shop now