Lockdown calls for ambulance hit double the usual daily total

This exceptional demand saw it having to make use of vehicles normally used by the voluntary arm on some occasions.

However, the service was ready for another wave and another lockdown, and chief ambulance officer Mark Mapp has thanked his team for its flexibility and adaptability.

As soon as the current lockdown was imposed on 23 January, Mr Mapp said the service activated parts of its business continuity and preparedness plan.

One aspect of this saw crews ‘buddied up’ so that the same two worked together for blocks of shifts, to reduce the risk of the whole team becoming infected.

Crews were also spread across three sites to minimise mixing and to help with social distancing.

Even with some 22% of operational staff having to isolate at one point, the way the shifts worked meant this had minimal impact on daily staffing levels.

‘We always knew there was a risk that the coronavirus could return to Guernsey with community seeding,’ said Mr Mapp.

‘As the emergency ambulance service, we, like colleagues in other health and government departments, were prepared for another wave and another lockdown.

‘We had plans in place and this time around we had the added bonus of not only our experience of the first lockdown last spring, but also the benefit of being able to share knowledge and experience from ambulance services in other jurisdictions.’

He said he had been in regular contact with chief ambulance officers in Jersey, the Isle of Man, Gibraltar and the Isle of Wight: ‘The collaboration has been extremely positive and has allowed all of us to learn from each other.

‘This has meant that despite being a small service, with no neighbouring countries to call upon for support, we have been able to demonstrate a high level of resilience.’

On two occasions the service received double its usual daily number of calls, with several other days where the demand was also up significantly, with two other days seeing an 85% increase.

‘The ambulance crews who have been on the front line, often working long hours and sometimes being called back into work to provide extra resilience during times of exceptional demand, have played a vital part in the island’s response to the pandemic,’ said Mr Mapp.

‘The clinicians have had the added challenge of having to wear personal protective equipment for long periods of time, sometimes in stressful situations.’

But despite the demand, he said the service had maintained an excellent standard of care, and response times have remained good.

As well as medical call-outs, the service spent a day transferring 12 residents from La Grande Mare residential home in St Saviour’s to the PEH after an outbreak of Covid-19 in the home.

Mr Mapp also thanked the volunteers who had helped deep clean ambulances used to transfer patients with possible Covid-19 symptoms.

‘I am hugely grateful and indebted to the volunteers from the St John decontamination team who have responded to the call day and night to deep clean ambulances after crews have treated potential Covid cases,’ he said.

During lockdown, many administration staff, senior officers and members of the senior leadership team have worked remotely: ‘The administration staff play a vital and often unseen role behind the scenes, but without their valued input we would not be able to function,’ said Mr Mapp.

St John paramedics have undertaken other aspects of healthcare during the Covid-19 response, with some deployed to the Emergency Department, some monitoring people in the waiting area of the community vaccination centre after they received their jabs, and others administering vaccinations for Public Health.

Mr Mapp said that in the last year St John’s has forged a partnership with Health & Social Care and these moves were in the spirit of supporting the HSC target operating model and the Partnership of Purpose.