An Ashford father of three who suffered a cardiac arrest at his home in May 2022 has been reunited, alongside his family, with some of the ambulance team who helped save his life. Gerard Quinn, 59, from Ashford, Kent, was at his family home with wife Jenny, daughter, Elizabeth and son, Solomon when he collapsed on 29 May, 2022. After calling 999, wife Jenny was able to move Gerard to a safe space
Two teams of volunteer Emergency Responders, (ERs), participating in a trial to understand how they can improve patient care, have responded to hundreds of seriously ill patients over the past year. The first team of responders began operating out South East Coast Ambulance Service’s (SECAmb’s) Ashford operating unit, in Kent, in February 2023, focussing primarily on the Romney Marsh area. The sec
Right Care, Right Person, (RCRP), is a national partnership approach led by police services alongside ambulance services, hospitals, mental health services and social services. It aims to ensure vulnerable people with health and social care needs are responded to by the most appropriate specialist service. The model recognises that many people in mental health crisis will often see a police offic
The use of a defibrillator on cardiac arrest patients, prior to the arrival of ambulance crews, is vital in improving cardiac arrest survival rates, a report published today by South East Coast Ambulance Service, (SECAmb), shows. The report, which looks at out-of-hospital cardiac arrests attended by SECAmb between April 2022 and March 2023, reveals that if a defibrillator is used prior to its arri
South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) is urging people use its services wisely and be aware of the demand both its 999 and NHS 111 services will face across the four-day Easter Bank Holiday weekend. SECAmb expects to handle up to 10,000 calls to its 999 service and in excess of 20,000 calls to NHS 111, a service it provides across much of its region (Sussex, Kent and Medway). By planning ahe
As we continue to build and strengthen the leadership of the organisation, we are making a number of changes to our senior leadership team. Executive Director of HR and Organisational Development, Ali Mohammed, will shortly be taking up a secondment elsewhere and we wish him well with this opportunity. We are pleased to share that Sarah Wainwright, currently Deputy Director of People & Workfo
On 31 January, we launched The Star Zone, our new digital Reward & Recognition Platform that allows our people to recognise and thank their colleagues through the use of e-cards. We’ve created a big library of animated e-cards for people to use, including introducing some special ‘limited edition’ ones to mark events like Chinese New Year and Ramadan! The Star Zone also allows leaders to prais
We were pleased to celebrate the role of women across SECAmb by hosting an event to mark International Women’s Day (8 March). The event, held on 5 March, and hosted by our Gender Equality Network, (GEN), provided an opportunity for colleagues to celebrate the achievements on female staff across SECAmb. Women now make up more than 58 per cent of our workforce. A significant increase on just 43 per
South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, (SECAmb), is pleased to see significant improvements in its results in the yearly national NHS Staff Survey. The 2023 survey, published by NHS England today, (7 March), saw SECAmb record improvements across all nine themes explored by the survey’s questions and improved scores to almost all individual questions. The Trust’s scores have also
Innovative technology enabling ambulance service dispatchers to view footage from the scene of trauma incidents via video live streaming from mobile phones is feasible to implement and evaluate, a new study led by the University of Surrey and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, reveals. Such technology, used via 999 callers’ smartphones, could aid emergency medical servi