Here at Devon air ambulance we have two helicopters and two Volvo xc90 s
this is one of them just behind me here. As you can see that fully marked and they
have the blue lights on top of the vehicle for rapid response under emergency driving conditions. Our service has developed drastically in recent years we
are now delivering enhanced and critical care to the roadside so in many cases we
are able to do exactly the same interventions as what would be done in
the hospital setting
So we carry two bags - one blue PAX bag red PAX bag as you can see here lots of
different size blood pressure cuffs the tempest monitoring allows us to measure
patient's heart rates their blood pressure their oxygen levels their
breathing rhythms. Within our top pouch we have some oxygen masks and some
nebulisers and we have sealed Airways bag to make sure that we know it's fully kitted.
So these are our selection of i-gels which are used to manage a patient's
airway, all of our endotracheal tubes and we have lots of basic airway adjuncts as well.
Within the red PAX bag we have
blankets and heated blankets to help keep our patients nice and warm and
prevent them bleeding. In the current
Covid-19 climate we have our white Tyvek suits and an infection control pouch. We have an intraosseous pouch which contains a bone drill which enables us to
deliver medication to people if we're unable to get a little needle into their
arm for whatever reason. We have a pelvic binder - this comes around a patient and if they've broken their pelvis in a specific way this helps to
realign it which helps to keep patients
This is our ventilator, this is what we use to breathe for our patients that
aren't breathing - it is exactlly the same as you would find in an intensive care department at the hospital.
This is our large suction unit so if patients have a lot
of vomit or blood or secretions in their airway we will use this to suction that out
before we're able to pop a tube in or an i-gel in that you saw earlier to manage their airway.
This is the Lucas device that we use to deliver chest compressions to your
patient in cardiac arrest and tucked in at the back of the car we have the green
bag which is the bag that we will use on we're first on scene so it's our first
response bag and the blue bag is a splint bag so if people have broken any
limbs we can wrap them up and we then suck the air out to hold their limb nice and steady.
In the back of the car we have our Tyvek suits just to make some
spares in case we see lots of patients one after the other and don't have time
to restock we also have some pairs of gloves and our face visors and these
green helmets that you can see tucked on the back of the seats are used
if we attend for example a road traffic collision.
In the front of our car as well as all the normal things that you would find in a car we have a little
iPad which we use to navigate to our incidents - when we input the route it
shows us exactly where we need to go a bit like a sat-nav system and this is
the panel that we use to put on the blue lights - 999 mode to light up.
So we often get asked what's the best method to get to scene whether that's by car or
whether that's by helicopter both have advantages both have disadvantages so
our cars are particularly useful when a job is close to the airbase or if we are
attending a patient in the city centre the aircraft are particularly useful if
we're going to a job in a rural location or somewhere that's difficult to access. Thank You for watching!