What happens if there is a major incident in Jersey?

When a Major Incident occurs in the UK, mutual aid arrangements with surrounding counties to the incident site normally swing into play to provide the extra "special" resource needed to cope with the situation. But what if you are on an Island where your nearest help is hours from getting to you.

A dedicated and focused team for the States of Jersey Ambulance Service (SOJAS) was created to provide help, support and resource should a major or special incident occur on the Island. This month John Sutherland Acting Assistant Chief Ambulance Officer of the States of Jersey Ambulance service explains the background to this pioneering volunteer initiative.

"Being cut off from the mainland UK means that we have to be able to sustain ourselves possibly for several hours before any outside help can be accessed from our sister island Guernsey, the UK or other areas.

"This need in 2005 led to a call going out in the Island for interested members of the
community to help set up and join a new unit called the ASU (Ambulance Support Unit).
This unit was to be sponsored, trained, and become part of SOJAS ready and waiting should an incident occur in the Island. "As time progressed the team started to get to grips with all the subjects that they needed to master to be competently deployed onto a Major Incident scene.

Modules of tuition in such very basic areas as "Manual Handling" weren't overlooked and a range of diverse topics was delivered to the volunteers by the SOJAS training team including
MIMMS Theory,AED training, Oxygen Administration, IHCD First Person on Scene Award, Communications Training and CBRN Training were all covered until a satisfactory level of competence was assured.

"The ASU then started to really make their role their own and proved its worth in being able to autonomously manage Casualty Cleaning Station Setups right the way up to Decontamination
Facility setups. As part of their training the ASU initiated their own awards called "Decontamination Technicians" which encompasses all the theory and practical elements
required to setup."

So what are the relative benefits of having a team of volunteers who can do this kind of work? John Sutherland explains further. "In comparison to the UK we are a small service with 36 Frontline Staff who can deliver advanced life support skills, 14 Control Staff and 15
PTS Staff. In addition to this we have an excellent working relationship with our local St
John Ambulance Brigade and they have staff and vehicles available to assist us at an incident
with patient care.

The ASU currently stands at 30 members, so our resource is increased by almost 50%. Our main concern prior to the existence of the ASU was that we would be using all of our Frontline resources to set up a Casualty Cleaning Station thereby taking them away from early and effective triage as well as advanced interventions that could make the difference between life
and death. The ASU can concentrate on setting up infrastructure whilst their full time colleagues start to assert their skills on the incident and begin to increase the level of treatment and care, with obvious benefits to the longer term prognosis for these casualties.

"Once the ASU have finished the CCS setup they also add to the mix as an "extra pairs of hands" by offering basic life support, equipment running or stretcher bearing, again the focus being preserving the freedom for Paramedics and Technicians not to get bogged down in
basic tasks and be able to move on to effectively treat more casualties.

John Sutherland concluded: "Building the ASU into what it is today has been a long process. Year on year the whole unit re-trains and repractices it's skills during training sessions to remain focused and eliminate skill fade, this "cyclical" training approach means that the established members of the team keep up to date and any new recruits coming into the
unit will be fully up to speed and competent within one year. Keeping volunteers interested
is always a very difficult task, but the ASU must have hit on an interesting formula for its members due to the fact that at the start of 2009 the unit has retained 86% of its original members.

So successful has been the unit that numbers have had to be capped at 30, there is even a waiting list for people to get on board....always a good sign of things going well!

"It is believed that what SOJAS have is unique for an Ambulance Service in the UK, where volunteers are used in such an all encompassing way, embedded within their own Service as the ASU is. For 2009 what lies ahead?

Well more of the same, keeping the training up to date, having some FUN...which is what keeps the guys in the team and as always experimenting and learning from what they do in the hope of gaining an insight that could solve current or future problems, they are a true "learning organisation".