Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance is delighted to have awarded a £30,000 grant to the DocBike charity, to fund two critical care monitors. The grant is aligned to both charities’ overall injury prevention strategy, which sees DSAA and DocBike working as key partners to prevent people from being involved in road traffic collisions and becoming patients in the first place.

DocBike is an injury prevention charity that aims to significantly reduce the number of motorcyclists killed or critically injured on our roads due to motorcycle collisions. Although DocBike operates as an independent charity, it’s partnership with DSAA means that it also forms one of several injury prevention arms of the charity, which engages with motorcyclists to deliver key injury prevention messages, while also working alongside local emergency services to provide roadside critical care.

When DocBike clinicians respond to an emergency on the bikes, they do so with the same critical care doctors and practitioners that work on DSAA and operate under the clinical governance procedures of DSAA’s critical care service. Recognising the benefits of carrying the same critical care monitoring system as DSAA, DocBike wanted to update its existing units to ensure that their full inventory of medical equipment replicated that carried onboard the helicopter.

The grant from DSAA has enabled DocBike to purchase two Zoll X Series critical care monitors from Zoll Medical Corporation, which will enable DocBike clinicians to manage a range of complex medical needs for patients; from those that need defibrillation due to suffering a cardiac arrest, to the most advanced blood pressure or pre-hospital patient monitoring.

The rationale behind awarding this grant is very straightforward because in order to do what we do, we have set out a stall of collaborating with other organisations. One of these key collaborations has been with DocBike because it lies at the very centre of our injury prevention agenda, where we are trying to help people to avoid being in a road traffic collision and becoming patients in the first place.

DocBike’s injury prevention work forms part of that core purpose and since it first started, it has now moved into responding to incidents to help patients in need. Often their patients will become our patients, so if we can offer seamless care through that transition from DocBike into our critical care, then that’s better for the patient.

The other reason we were able to do this is because DocBike not only supports our aim in terms of injury prevention and the treatment of patients, but also the fact that they are a fully governed charity, with their medical activity effectively being governed by DSAA and the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust.