AN ambulance service chief executive has teamed up with colleagues to complete the ultimate challenge for charity. Will Hancock, Chief Executive of South Central Ambulance Service has joined forces with colleagues from the College of Paramedics, Association of Ambulance Chief Executives and East Midlands Ambulance Service to raise money for The Ambulance Staff Charity (TASC). The group will be undertaking the Ultimate Fundraising Challenge , completing Velocity, the fastest zipline in the world and climbing the highest mountain in England and Wales, Mount Snowdon at night on July 17. The team are aiming to raise £5,000 for TASC which helps care for the mental, physical and financial wellbeing of the UK’s ambulance community.
BBC News
By Noel Titheradge & Dr Faye Kirkland
BBC News
image copyrightEPA
Ambulances waiting outside busy hospitals over Christmas led to secondary Covid victims , the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has said.
Information requests show that the number of hours ambulances spent waiting to offload patients rose by 63% in London and 48% in the West Midlands.
BBC News has spoken to the widow of a man who died of a stroke, having waited three hours for an ambulance.
The NHS said capacity had been freed up despite increasing Covid-19 infections.
NHS England said the number of individual ambulances waiting more than 30 minutes across the whole of England from the end of December to the beginning of February, had fallen.
BBC News
Published
Nearly 20 major healthcare bodies are appealing to the PM for better personal protection against coronavirus.
They say at least 930 health and care workers have died of Covid-19 and more are experiencing long-term effects.
In a letter, they say measures to stop airborne spreading are inadequate and call for urgent improvement in masks and other defences against variants.
The government said it was monitoring evidence on airborne transmission and would update advice where necessary .
The organisations involved represent a wide range of health professionals, from doctors and nurses to dieticians and physiotherapists.
With health and care workers at three to four times greater risk of becoming infected than the general public, the plea to Boris Johnson is to make an urgent intervention to prevent further loss of life .
BBC News
By David Shukman
image captionICU doctors have the highest grade of PPE
Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, there have been hundreds of deaths among healthcare staff from Covid and many thousands off sick or self-isolating, but many hospital staff say they still don t feel properly protected at work.
They blame a sudden weakening in policy on masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) early in the pandemic.
And the largest health unions and many professional groups say the new variants of the coronavirus could put staff at even greater risk.
Matt Butler was preparing for a weekend shift last March, aware he would be caring for his first Covid-19 patient.
Paramedics who can spend hours treating Covid-19 patients in the back of an ambulance are calling for access to better personal protective equipment (PPE).
The College of Paramedics has written to Health Minister Robin Swann asking him to act to protect the massively overstretched workforce.
The organisation has warned the current situation is putting the lives of staff, patients and their families at risk, describing paramedics as potential super spreaders .
Under current guidance, when a paramedic attends a call involving a patient with Covid-19 they should wear a surgical mask, visor, plastic apron and gloves.
However, given the pressures on the health service, crews can sometimes spend hours in an ambulance with a patient waiting to hand them over to hospital staff.