Four of Peterborough’s Magpas Air Ambulance crew members are taking on new roles as Advanced Paramedics in Critical Care in the East of England Ambulance Service. 

The four clinicians are taking on the roles in the EEAS in partnership with Magpas to enable these advanced paramedics to work in a doctor and paramedic team flying on the air ambulance and provide critical care working alone on a rapid response vehicle. 

Magpas is the first air ambulance charity to work collaboratively with the ambulance service to deliver this new resource.  

Advanced Paramedic Dan Read, who is also one of the clinicians to provide this new service, explains the importance of advanced paramedic teams with rapid response vehicles. 

The cars allow them to provide care those exceeding the capability of standard ambulances, which unless required, frees up air ambulance teams for the “highest acuity jobs”.  

“For example, we can provide a sedation to rescue a patient with very painful injuries from a car involved in an accident.  

“On the whole, the service we provide is not dissimilar to that provided by the Magpas Air Ambulance team, however there are a couple of procedures we can’t perform alone.  

The advanced paramedic team have already spent over 850 hours providing this service since it started on September 3 2022.

In that time, most of their calls were to medical incidents, traumatic injuries and road traffic collisions with an average response time of just 14 minutes; 43% of patients were reached in under 10 minutes.  

The EEAS is seeking to recruit more Advanced Paramedics in Critical Care around the East of England. 

Reflecting on this time so far, Dan spoke about some cardiac arrest cases where each patient was only able to provide the adequate care necessary thanks to the partnership of Magpas and the EEAS. 

Tim Daniels, East of England Ambulance NHS Trust Air Operations manager, said: “We are delighted to extend our partnership with Magpas Air Ambulance and to expand upon the vital pre-hospital medical services needed across the region for our most severely unwell and injured patients. 

“This collaborative approach allows us to combine the strengths of both organisations to support our Advanced Paramedics in Critical Care.”