We’ll be here for communities across the region 24/7 throughout the festive period.
Last December our crews responded to 284 calls for lifesaving care, making 12 missions on Christmas Day alone.
KSS Paramedic Phill Richardson is one of our dedicated crew members who will be working over the festive period.
Phill says: “I worked last Christmas Day too and it’s a privilege to be there to help people when they are having what may be the worst day of their life and give them critical care.
“We’ll probably do more training on the days leading up to it so that on Christmas Day, we can give ourselves a little bit more of a break with things like maybe cooking a Christmas meal or playing board games.
“We’ll try and have some form of a Christmas together with a Secret Santa and everything, but we’ll be ready to drop everything and go as soon as a call comes in. Last year we spent a couple of hours preparing Christmas Dinner but 30 minutes before it was ready a call came in and one of the crews had to get up and go. We plated it up for them and we sat with them a few hours later when they had it.”
The majority of the 284 missions (67%) last December were to patients who had experienced serious injury, most often from involvement in a road traffic collision, but also from incidents such as work or leisure accidents or falls from height.
Of these missions, 34% were to patients with medical emergencies – a sudden illness such as cardiac arrest or stroke.
We want to help the communities we serve by raising awareness to try and prevent incidents happening in the first place. If you are heading out on the roads, please remember these four things:
- Don’t drink and drive
- Keep to the speed limit
- Don’t use your mobile phone
- Don’t get distracted by children and pets in cars
If you are giving or receiving a bicycle this Christmas, please make sure you also get a helmet, reflective clothing and lights. Former patient Sam Resouly knows from first-hand experience how important it is to wear a helmet. Do take a moment to read Sam’s powerful story.
At a time when many of us will be spending time with family and friends, we’re encouraging as many people as possible to learn how to do CPR so that they know what to do when the worst happens.
A staggering 80% of cardiac arrests happen at home but, tragically, only 1 in 10 of these people survive. In October we trained over 80,000 people how to do CPR and use a defibrillator with a series of online and in-person events (aakss.org.uk/restart). The chances of a surviving a cardiac arrest are more than doubled by starting early CPR and defibrillator, meaning anyone can be a lifeline for a loved one. By learning it you could potentially give the gift of life this Christmas.
Our doctors, paramedics, pilots and dispatchers will be operational 24/7 throughout the festive period, including Christmas Day, to provide critical care to those in need across Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Our expert crews can reach any part of Kent, Surrey and Sussex in under 30 minutes, bringing the emergency room to the scene to deliver lifesaving care when every second counts, performing interventions such as general anaesthesia, blood transfusions and surgery.
We’re asking people across Kent, Surrey and Sussex to help us be `Ready to Save Lives’ this Christmas with an appeal highlighting that lots of families would be facing very different futures if it wasn’t for their lifesaving work. It features the poignant story of former patient Sam Jenner, who was six months pregnant when she experienced a cardiac arrest at home.
