As a charity, our vision is ‘to provide the maximum patient benefit by delivering the most effective, clinically excellent and financially secure air ambulance service in our region’. By actively supporting injury prevention, we can save even more lives. Dr Ian Mew provides an update on the work of our prevention team.

Allowing our clinicians to engage in injury prevention activities is a clear demonstration that we are interested in saving lives wherever
we can. In a modern-day society, engaging in injury prevention is not only expected of us, but it is also morally the right thing to do.

Water-based injury prevention

Following the significant media coverage of several incidents at Durdle Door over the summer, our clinical team have understood the potential for helping to prevent people coming to harm, from activities based around water. Our team are collaborating with the RNLI on key messages and education as well as face-to-face interactions, teaching and awareness where possible. Much of this work is focused on the summer months as this is the time where most of the events and accidents happen. This shared approach and mental model is already facilitating improved DSAA and RNLI team dynamics at incidents we attend, improving patient care.

Farmer Down

Members of our team continue to address the high risk needs of the agricultural community through the development of an initiative called Farmer Down. The initiative aims to help prevent death in agriculture. Farmer Down was piloted last year with two local young farmer groups. 30 farmers were trained on how to manage serious injuries such as loss of limbs and cardiac arrest. Most importantly though, how not to become a patient.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to prevent any face-to-face engagement with young farmers and not being able to attend county shows, the team have been using their time to work on content delivery for when restrictions are lifted. This includes the development of a very engaging and beautifully illustrated children’s book.

We will ensure to share any further developments on this exciting project in due course.

Safe Drive, Stay Alive

Members of the DSAA team have also been working alongside Dorset and Wiltshire Fire Service (DWFS), Maisie Sheridan (one of our patients whom you will have read about in previous editions of Beeline) and our communications team, on producing future material to support the primary prevention of road traffic injuries. We have been collaborating closely and signposting each other’s projects on social media to raise awareness and exposure of initiatives such as Road Safety Week (focusing on speed awareness), statistics on road traffic incidents and key messages on prevention to use within future material and media releases.

A selection of talking head videos have also been produced to support the DWFS resource package for schools which focus on injury prevention and road safety. These Safe Drive, Stay Alive presentations are aimed at reducing the number of young people killed or seriously injured in road traffic collisions. It is presented by serving members of the emergency services, parents of young people who have lost their lives in a road traffic incident, those left disabled and those that have caused a fatal road traffic collision. The project reaches over 15,000 young people every year. Normally, these would be held face-to-face, however, due to the pandemic, an updated
digital version went live to schools on 2nd October 2020.

DocBike

Over the past few months, a vast amount of work has been going on behind the scenes at DocBike to raise the profile of DSAA and motorcycle injury prevention on a national scale.

DocBike is a charity which combines a highly qualified consultant level doctor or critical care practitioner with two wheels, to help reduce deaths and serious injuries on our roads due to motorcycle incidents. It was co-founded by one of our Critical Care Doctors, Ian Mew.

When motorcyclists are involved in a collision, their injuries are often catastrophic; no amount of medical care can save their life. That is why, much of DocBike’s time is invested in preventing motorcyclists from being involved in a collision in the first place.

Autumn was a busy period, with DocBike assisting in national campaigns such as Project Edward and Road Safety Week. The charity was also welcomed at the Dorset Strategic Road Safety Partnership, presenting to local councils, police, fire service and other strategic partners, on how their engagement with motorcyclists is helping to reduce collisions in the area. Furthermore, they have been working the RAC Foundation nationally to ‘map’ when and where motorcycle collisions occur on road networks. This information will enable them to engage with motorcyclists at a time and place where the data shows a collision is most likely to occur.

Finally, a number of our DSAA clinical team have volunteered their time to ride a DocBike motorcycle. This will provide another platform for our outreach project and an opportunity for us to further collaborate with our ambulance service colleagues.