A vital Cumbrian charity has been boosted by an £83,500 grant.
The BEEP Doctors charity, which operates right across Cumbria, received the grant from the Mark Benevolent Fund, working for the province of Cumberland and Westmorland.
The cheque was presented to the crew by the Freemasons of West Cumbria and has paid for some equipment that will help the volunteer doctors save even more lives across the county. The new equipment has been put to good use already during Storm Arwen at the weekend.
With the generous funding, the BEEP Doctors have been able to purchase seven Shiller “Touch 7” Monitor/Defibrillators, plus nine Schiller AED Defibrillators. The monitors observe all the essential physiological parameters that the doctors need for treating patients, especially the sickest ones.
These parameters include blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen saturations, expired air carbon dioxide, respiratory rate, 12-lead ECG monitoring as well as defibrillating/shocking the heart, external heart pacing and external DC conversion for abnormal heart rhythms. The smaller AED Defibrillators will defibrillate/shock the heart.
These new devices are all touch screen and also connect via Bluetooth and to the team’s new iPads, which were recently donated. This means they are easy to use, but also very intuitive as it means the doctors are able to download all the observations and procedures onto the patient notes on the iPads and provides more comprehensive reporting of the callouts they attend.
The team of volunteer BEEP Doctors were called out several times over the weekend due to the severe weather and were able to put their new equipment to good use. Storm Arwen on Saturday evening and the snow flurries on Sunday made it particularly difficult conditions for the doctors to work in.
As a result of Storm Arwen, BEEP Doctors were called to several incidents and worked closely with the North West Ambulance Service, fire service, mountain rescue and Cumbria police.
Two doctors were called to assist at a callout in Ambleside with multiple incidents of trees falling on people. The conditions were particularly treacherous and the BEEP Doctors XC1 vehicle needed support from the mountain rescue to ensure the team got back to the south of the county safely.
Four BEEP Doctors were also called to two road traffic accidents in the north of the county, with some very serious injuries.
