A specialised Critical Care Paramedic Service is now supporting the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) at the Hamad Medical Cooperation (HMC).
“The launch of the paramedic team is about how to improve time management and making it the best service,” Dr Hanan Al Kuwari, Managing Director of HMC said at a press conference held yesterday to showcase the new facilities.
Emergency Medical Services is enhanced with a specialised service team of 40 highly trained Critical Care Paramedics (CCPs). They use a range of special rapid response vehicles, ambulances and the LifeFlight Aero-Medical Helicopters to deliver high quality critical care services throughout the country.
The team provides critical care from the roadside to the hospital for patients with life threatening cases. They also undertake critical care of inter-hospital transfer of patients, where patients need to be transferred from one hospital to another to receive specialised treatment.
“We have found that demand for EMS is increasing by 10.4 percent per year and this has been the main impetus for Hamad to have invested significantly in enhancing our services in recent years. The achievements made are testimony to the fact that our emergency services are among the best in the region,” said Dr Al Kuwari.
Also reports say the demand for ambulance services on emergency cases increases 10 percent annually.
The CCPs team provides an essential service to Qatar and works 24 hours a day attending to a variety of scenes such as traffic accidents, heart attacks and drowning. The team uses helicopters to ensure they can reach locations that are too far away for road vehicles to reach quickly and transport the patient to hospital safely.
The HMC aims to get an EMS response to life threatened patients within minutes from the call for help.
“Especially in critical cases, a timely response is essential and in order to achieve this we needed to enhance our systems to comply with such ambitious goals,” Dr Al Kuwari added.
The CCPs team has recently received training to harmonise their clinical practice to the needs of the people in Qatar. It is coupled with investment in improved technology and equipment, making it a service that is operated and maintained according to international best practice standards.
“Crucially, the improvements mean we will be able to save more lives,” said Dr Robert Owen, Executive Director of EMS. “This is a supplementary service to enhance the emergency medical services,” he added.
The Lifeflight Aero-Medical Helicopter service currently operates only during daylight hours – roughly from 6am to 6pm, or when the sun sets. The arrival of new CCPs and the installation of new technology on the helicopters will also mean that the service will soon be operational after sunset. The CCPs teams are located at places with more demand as the West Bay, and near the Industrial Area including one at the HMC.
The 40 member team with mix nationalities has five female members.
The Peninsula