BASICS Hampshire (www.basicshampshire.org.uk)
BEEP BEEP, BEEP BEEP, BEEP BEEP.... No it's not a phone, or even the microwave having a funny 5 minutes, this is the sound of a pager at 3am in the morning to tell a volunteer doctor that there has been a serious accident and they are required to attend. Yes volunteer!
The BASICS Hampshire service is made up of volunteer Doctors that devote their own time (ie after a full day at work) to continue to help serious injuries or illnesses in the Hampshire area. Please note that whilst Hampshire isn't alone in having such a service, it is not country wide, and relies on the efforts of the volunteers.
It is no exaggeration to say that Ricky owes his life not only to Wessex Neuro Unit for their care and attention in hospital, but also to the BASICS Hampshire service because without them he wouldn't have even made it to the hospital with a pulse in his body. Dr Phil Hyde attended the scene of the accident and was able to give Ricky a general anaesthetic at the scene, and provide immediate treatments that the paremedics are simply not able to administer.
Dr Hyde was also able to recognise the seriousness of the injuries to Ricky and ensure that he was sent direct to Southampton General Hospital and in particular the Neuro Unit.
BASICS Hampshire is a charity made up of 20 medical professionals who in their own time and unpaid, volunteer to provide advanced medical care outside of the hospital. This means that hospital level care, which some seriously ill or injured people require, is available at the scene of an incident and continues all the way to the hospital. BASICS Hampshire had 1200 requests for a doctor at the scene of road traffic accidents and other out of hospital incidents in 2007. They were able to respond to 750 of these.
The unfortunate situation that the BASICS service find themselves in is that they are almost a secret service because despite lobbying local MP's and the government, they are failing to be recognised by the government as a key and important service. If you have read this then you will undoubtedly realise now that this is a key service, and you won't have been alone in not even realising that these volunteers exist.
If there is an NHS service such as this in every county in the UK then there could, and probably would be, lives saved each year. And no-one can put a price on that, just ask the family and friends of Ricky Fernandez who in a large part owes his life to the fact that there was a BASICS doctor on call on the evening of his motorbike accident.
To read more about this service and what you can do to support them please visit their website at www.basicshampshire.org.uk. Or to listen to either the radio discussion or the parliamentary debate, please follow the links below:
