A group of West Country doctors have been volunteering as emergency responders in their spare time to help patients in need of medical attention. The four doctors - Andrew Heavyside from Winterbourne, Glyn Thomas from Bristol, Mark Tehan from South Gloucestershire and James Tooley from Somerset - all choose to hang up their uniforms after shifts and go back onto the frontline to help the ambulance service.
They volunteer for a charity called Bravo Medics, and by responding to emergency calls alongside the ambulance service they can offer patients a higher level of care at the scene of an incident around the clock, rather than the patient having to wait to arrive at an accident and emergency department to see a doctor.
Andrew, who works as an anaesthetist told Bristol Live: "All of us are just really passionate about the fact that (care) should be available 24 hours a day. I think our main driver as a group is wanting to have 24-hour care available for patients because, while there's relatively few patients outside of day time, there are still people that, if it was someone you knew, you would want to know that they were getting the best treatment."
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The group was set up in 2020, with Andrew saying that it has filled a gap in emergency care in the Westcountry. The 36-year-old said that while other charities operating in the South West such as the Great Western Air Ambulance are similar to Bravo Medics, they don't offer a 24-hour service.
Andrew and the other doctors all have blue lights fitted on their cars, allowing them to get to incidents quickly once they are contacted by an ambulance control room. Once there, they can provide a more advanced level of treatment than paramedics can, including powerful pain relief and devices which can that provide mechanical CPR to cardiac arrest sufferers.
Andrew says that occasionally, they will be the first people to arrive at a scene, and he has noticed this more often recently. "Whereas a year ago we would sometime be first on scene but there would always be an ambulance very quickly, what we're noticing now is that more and more there just isn't an ambulance available to get the patient."
However, he praised the ambulance service for the work that they do. "It's opened my eyes to how difficult working in that environment is and how difficult things like working overnight and driving on blue lights are.
"It's given me real respect for the paramedics and the other emergency services that do that job every day. It's a really tiring job," he said.
Because the four Bravo Medics are volunteers, they can only offer this service for three to four nights a week between them. They are careful not to overstretch themselves - although they are happy to help when people are in dire need of treatment.
"We shouldn't be doing a full day at work, spending our night doing this and then going back to work. So we're having to only be available when we've got a relatively free day the next day.
"There's obviously incidents that can be very tiring, or times when you're rung up about something very serious. And sometimes we'll just try and make ourselves available when we can for very serious jobs, if there's a particularly unwell child or something like that.
"Even if it involves us having to drop other things, personal things, like leaving a birthday party or an important dinner. If we know it's important then we'll do that".
However, Andrew says that if they had three or four more doctors, the charity could expand and operate seven days a week. At the moment though, things have become more tight for them financially with the rising costs of fuel.
Because their budget is limited, they can only offer the volunteers 45p in fuel expense for every mile driven, and rising petrol prices are now leaving them out of pocket. "There's the direct effect in that it's more expensive to put fuel in your car, so going to these jobs costs us more money," he said.
"But there's also the effect that all of our kit that we buy is already expensive, but because of the costs involved in moving it around the country before it gets to us, it's understandably become more expensive. But this does put a real pressure on the charity."
In spite of these strains, Andrew says that he has been pleasantly surprised in the last two years of volunteering at the warmth of the public and their willingness to help others. "When faced with someone that's having a severe medical problem, everyone is usually so willing to help and do whatever they can to help their fellow human, and that's a really nice thing to be part of and see."
To visit the Bravo Medics website, click here.
