At 7:00am on Monday morning I woke up and thought "Phew, it's over!". This has been a really long week for me, on duty for the first time as coordinator for the Freewheelers blood bikes. The coordintars job seems at first glance like a simple one: Take the telephone calls from hospitals and dispatch the nearest rider to deal. If only it were that simple. From now on I with have a great deal of respect for anyone involved in the logistics of a transport organisation, whether it be taxi, plane, fire engine or truck.
Throughout the week I have kept a tally of "the scores on the doors", a phrase borrowed from a long defunct BBC TV show called The Generation Game. So here they are for the whole week:
We handled 57 requests for assistance. 4 were emergency calls. 6 were declined by me and 1 was cancelled by the hospital.
Our 3 volunteer riders spent over 67 hours away from home, either in the saddle or walking the corridors of various hospitals.
We carried blood samples, drugs, patient notes, medical instruments, and X-Rays and scans - both in film and CD-ROM format.
We saved the NHS £1565.
I just want to pick up on this last point - the money we saved the NHS. If our service didn't exist the NHS would have to rely on taxis do handle the work that we do. This is what the figure of £1565 is based on. However, a taxi would not have helped the patient with the intra cranial bleed on Saturday when our bike used blue lights and sirens to get through busy Saturday afternoon shoppers travelling into Bristol and Bath. It is difficult to put a price on the real saving that we bring to the NHS because you cannot put a price on a life. However, it is easy to calculate that the NHS would have to spend close to £400,000 to replicate our service with full time employees and dedicated vehicles. That's not bad for a charity run by volunteers which needs just £20,000 a year to operate. Help support us - Give Money!
Technorati tags: Volunteer, Motorcycle Emergency
Posted by Robin Wilton on February 19, 2007 at 10:54 PM GMT #