It’s claimed the HSE is playing “Russian Roulette” with the lives of patients in West Clare.
Independent Councillor Ian Lynch is commenting after firefighters this week resuscitated an unresponsive patient in Kilkee, as the nearest ambulance was 60 kilometres away in Ennis at the time.
Clare’s Fire Service personnel are trained to Emergency First Responder level and assist the National Ambulance Service if required, which was the case on Tuesday.
Fire Fighters administered CPR, and used a defibrillator to resuscitate the man who was subsequently flown to hospital.
Councillor Lynch has been telling Clare FM’s Fiona Cahill that solutions to ambulance personel shortages are available:
Full statement from the HSE:
The National Ambulance Service (NAS) can confirm receipt of an emergency call for St Patricks Terrace, Kilkee, Co Clare at 14.47hrs on the 8th August 2017.
The call was triaged using the internationally recognised Advanced Medical Priority Dispatch System (AMPDS). This system prioritises calls using internationally agreed procedures and protocols thus ensuring that life threatening and potentially life threatening calls receive an appropriate response. The emergency call taker identified that the patient was experiencing a cardiac/respiratory arrest and commenced CPR with the help of the caller.
The NEOC emergency dispatcher allocated the nearest available ambulance which responded from Ennis ambulance station and was supported by a rapid response vehicle (RRV) with an advance paramedic which arrived at scene at 15.14hrs.
As this was a cardiac/respiratory arrest the National Emergency Operations Centre notified the Garda, local Fire Service and dispatched the aircorp to the scene before the arrival of paramedics to scene.
The attending paramedics provided pre hospital medical care before transferring the patient via Aircorp helicopter to University Hospital Limerick.
Statement from Clare County Fire Service:
In Clare, Fire Service personnel are trained to Emergency First Responder level, and are available to assist the National Ambulance Service if requested.
On Tuesday morning, the National Ambulance Service requested the assistance of the Fire Service through the Munster Regional Communications Centre to an incident in Kilkee.
Kilkee Fire Brigade was mobilised and provided medical assistance to an unresponsive patient until handing over the patient to the care of the National Ambulance Service.
