BASICS Devon volunteers, who provide specially trained Doctors for enhanced care at accidents and medical emergencies in support of South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, have developed an on-line clinical governance dashboard, which captures data for every incident that the charity attends. Thanks to a HELP Appeal donation of £5,000, the dashboard will now be developed further.
The dashboard aimed to create a system to log non-identifiable incident details to support the charity with its data capture, education, clinical governance, and asset (equipment) tracking. To date, 10 other BASICS (British Association for Immediate Care) schemes across the UK use the dashboard to log their emergency call out activity.
In 2020, BASICS Devon started development on an incident dashboard. A large success and with an obvious role within the charity, the dashboard was expanded to other BASICS South West schemes with continual development and enhanced features. In 2021, BASICS schemes across the UK were invited to use the dashboard to assist their own charities with their objectives.
As a charity, they want to support other schemes to ensure BASICS responders and their schemes have strong clinical governance and quick access to simple reporting. It was made possible after the scheme successfully bid for the £5,000 donation from a grant of £250,000, which is given to the British Association for Immediate Care every year by the County Air Ambulance HELP Appeal – the only charity in the country dedicated to funding NHS hospital helipads. BASICS Devon can now maintain and further develop the clinical governance dashboard for existing and additional lifesaving schemes.
The volunteers record callout data on the dashboard including, incident date, times and location, if they were first on scene, incident description and any procedures carried out and additional benefit offered to patients.
The dashboard benefits schemes by having this, real time captured data, it enables schemes to monitor volunteer activity, incident management, highlight kit checks, car details as well as clinical governance.
They can review cases, which enables advanced and detailed education and training sessions as the clinical team undertake regular clinical case reviews managed through the dashboard. All cases involving enhanced medical care (such as sedation or a surgical procedure) are subject to review either on a one to-one basis or at clinical governance meetings. This further improves the immediate medical care that the volunteer responders deliver on scene in an emergency to their local communities.
Any learning from individual cases can be shared with BASICS schemes across the South West.
The Dashboard is a vital resource for the charity as it helps demonstrate the impact the BASICS scheme has in their communities.
BASICS Devon help reduce response times and, for many emergencies are able to stand down the ambulance response. Being on the ground, in our local communities, BASICS Devon can be fast to the scene in all weather conditions and at night, and likely to arrive first.
As a team of specialist voluntary doctors, there is no equivalent in Devon. The doctors are senior decision makers and carry enhanced pain relief, sedative drugs and specialist equipment. They are also trained to undertake a number of specialist lifesaving surgical procedures.
Since January BASICS Devon doctors have attended 216 callouts, 68 of which were at night, and they arrived first on the scene at 31% of them.
