Dublin People - HSE changes emergency cover in wake of incident

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HSE changes emergency cover in wake of incident

Thursday, 21 August 2008

THE Health Services Executive (HSE) has put new measures in place to respond to emergency calls in South County Dublin following an incident when a 50-year-old woman waited almost an hour for an ambulance after she collapsed.
Southside People reported last month how employees at the Ventilux factory in Dún Laoghaire rang the emergency services for their colleague Theresa O’Toole when she became ill.
Theresa’s fellow workers became anxious and redialled the emergency number as an ambulance had still not arrived 10 minutes later.
Fifty minutes elapsed before the ambulance arrived on the scene.
Brian Ford, a colleague of Ms O’Toole, called into the fire station in Dún Laoghaire, where he knew some of the local firemen were fully trained paramedics, because he was worried that the ambulance had not yet arrived.
Emergency service operators informed Mr Ford that an ambulance was en route from Tallaght as there was none available in the South County Dublin area at the time.
In the end, firemen at Dún Laoghaire gave Ms O’Toole oxygen and succeeded in stabilising her.
Mr Ford said he was shocked when staff at Dún Laoghaire Fire Station informed him that the HSE does not contact the local fire brigade staff – who are fully trained paramedics - in emergency calls, even though this is what happens in the rest of the Dublin area.
Emergency services calls received from the Dún Laoghaire, Dalkey, Killiney, Shankill and the South County Dublin areas are covered by Loughlinstown ambulance base, which is controlled solely by the HSE.
Dublin Fire Brigade is currently contracted by the relevant local authority to provide ambulance and emergency services cover in every part of Dublin outside Dún Laoghaire.
Therefore, when someone makes an emergency services call in relation to a cardiac arrest case, for example, both a Dublin Fire Brigade ambulance and fire engine will call to the scene in the majority of cases.
Even when there was a shortage of ambulances in the South County Dublin area, up to now the HSE did not use the local fire services for emergencies - even though most firemen are fully trained paramedics and in some cases able to attend the scene far more promptly than HSE ambulance staff.
Concerns
Following the incident last month, Deputy Ciarán Cuffe (GP) wrote to the HSE expressing his concerns about the situation.
He subsequently received a letter from Pat McCreanor, Chief Ambulance Officer with the HSE, who said that from now on they would contact the nearest available trained emergency personnel to attend to incidents.
McCreanor said: “The ambulance service have in operation a number of protocols and procedures to ensure the nearest available ambulance is responded to each emergency situation irrespective of Health Services Executive or Dublin City Council.
“These protocols and procedures have now been added to so that the delay, which occurred in Dún Laoghaire, is further mitigated. Doctors, fire tenders and appropriate trained staff and existing ambulance personnel will be responding to the emergencies when available, so that the response times to patients needing care is minimised.”
Deputy Cuffe said this type of coordinated response would ensure that response times for emergency services would be minimised.
"I would also like to commend the staff in the Ventilux Factory for their initiative during the recent incident there and for bringing this issue to the fore,” he added.

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