It is a Suffolk charity which could one day save your life – but also one which many have never heard of.
The Suffolk Accident Rescue Service (SARS) is nearly 45 years old and is staffed by doctors and paramedics, often volunteering in their spare time.
They respond to 999 calls and in 18% of their call-outs over the past year have actually been on the scene before paramedics from the East of England Ambulance Service. This is because the solo responders are based within communities so are often closer to an emergency scene than ambulance staff.
On Monday, the charity unveiled its new £32,000 rapid response vehicle (RRV) – a Volvo XC70 – that will be operating all over Suffolk helping to save lives.
“This is our second car,” said the charity’s honorary president Andy Mason. “For six weeks we’ve been doing trials on this car. We had the two cars out on New Year’s Eve with three people in each car and dealt with six incidents.
“It was one of the busiest nights the East of England Ambulance Service has ever seen.
“More than 4,500 calls came through, 1,000 more than they normally deal with. Having us around to help deal with the really serious incidents is a great help.”
SARS has around 30 different volunteers helping to crew the shifts on the team car.
Volunteers include anaesthetists, critical care paramedics and other clinicians.
“We are delighted to have this addition to our volunteer critical care resource,” said Ben Hall, SARS general operations manager. “We have only started running a team car in the last couple of years and it has proved a real success, combining the skills of our specialist doctors and paramedics to help treat critically-ill and injured patients who might otherwise not survive to reach hospital.”
The new car represents a long-term investment in Suffolk by the charity. It will help train new members with the view of increasing the number of solo responders. It means the charity is now able to run multiple shifts, such as it did on New Year’s Eve.
SARS volunteers include air ambulance volunteers and doctors – all of whom choose to give their time freely in addition to their paid work.
They are mobilised by the ambulance service’s critical care desk and are sent to patients who are thought to need specialist immediate care before they reach hospital.
“It’s basically taking the hospital out to the patient,” said Dr Mason. “The sort of intervention you would expect in A&E we can do at the roadside or at the scene of the incident.
“It’s not just accidents – we do medical calls, cardiac arrests – really anything. It’s a very specialised branch of medicine and we need to have some very expensive pieces of equipment to be able to offer patients the sort of care that we’re able to give them.”
The new RRV, which goes alongside a Subaru Forester from 2008, was unveiled at the Active Business Centre in Bury St Edmunds.
Sponsors thanked
The new rapid response vehicle (RRV), cost £32,000 and was bought with the help of several donations.
Among those were the St Edmunds Trust, Bury St Edmunds Town Council, Suffolk Land Rover Owners’ Club, the Community Dental Service and locality grants from Suffolk county councillors Tony Brown and Sarah Stamp, and Bury St Edmunds Town Council.
SARS honorary president and former volunteer Andy Mason said: “We are delighted to receive such fantastic support from a wide range of funders based in the area we serve.”
What they said
Andrew Speed, chairman of Bury St Edmunds Town Council, said: “The town council understands the unique role that SARS play in an emergency situation and we were delighted to lend support. Further support is planned for 2017.”
Alan Bedford, from the St Edmunds Trust, said: “The trust was particularly delighted to help fund the purchase of the new RRV for SARS, an organisation providing a magnificent and free service for people in Suffolk. It’s a good example of the ongoing work of our trust in supporting organisations caring for sick or disabled people in the area.”
Facts and figures
- Since 1972, SARS staff have attended nearly 17,000 calls in Suffolk – just more than one a day since it was formed.
- The team resource was introduced in 2014 to supplement SARS’ existing team of solo responders.
- In 2016, 30 different clinical volunteers helped crew weekly shifts on the team car. Normally, it would be a doctor or paramedic and another critical care specialist.
- The reason SARS exists is because there are significant distances between Suffolk hospitals and some critically-ill or injured patients require immediate and specialist care before they reach hospital.
- Examples include a patient who had a cardiac arrest at the cinema and needed monitoring as he was taken straight to Papworth Hospital.
- For information on SARS, visit www.sars999.org.uk
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