Mayo consultant calls for introduction of flying doctors emergency service

“People are dying because of our lack of action in critical care”, Mayo-based consultant in emergency medicine, Dr Lisa Cunningham, has told The Mayo News. “Inaction by the government and HSE is costing the lives of young, healthy, fit people.”

The well-known doctor, who has worked with the Mayo LGFA and GAA backroom teams, is calling for a change in how Ireland’s air ambulances are staffed. She would like to see a doctor-inclusive helicopter emergency medicine service.

Ireland is currently an outlier, alongside Cyrus, to other EU countries in how we staff our air ambulance service. They are the only two who don’t have doctors as part of the air ambulance crews.

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“Even on the island, we have a double standard of care as Northern Ireland integrated doctors in 2017 into prehospital emergency care.” In Ireland, air ambulance treatment is administered by advanced paramedics.

Including doctors in the staffing of air ambulances would “complement the national ambulance service and the patient need and work in tandem with them”, says Dr Cunningham. 

Highlighting the number of road traffic collisions that result in a fatality in this country, she says: "Trauma doesn’t respect borders - a car accident in France causes the same trauma, so the treatment should be the same here. There are at least seven or eight other treatments provided in the UK air ambulance service that are not provided here.”

One such treatment is the potentially life-saving blood transfusion: "If patients come to and emergency department needing a blood transfusion, they will get it within twenty minutes. Yet with the current pre-hospital care, they don't get that."

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Every five weeks, Dr Cunningham travels from Knock airport to the East Midlands, for two or three shifts with the Linc and Notts air ambulance service, so knows first hand the difference a doctor-inclusive service can make.

“In the UK, if someone has a traumatic injury, we provide treatment at scene and fly directly to the specialised hospital. In Ireland, the national ambulance service will get to the scene and will bring the patient to nearest hospital. We need to treat at the scene and then bring them to specialist doctors. If someone has a brain injury, there is no point bringing them to Mayo University Hospital, where we do not have neurosurgery and then onto a four hour journey to Dublin.”

A doctor working in the UK helicopter emergency medicine system would have autonomy to say they need to go to the major trauma centre, not to a local hospital.

The HSE has conducted a feasibility study into moving to a doctor inclusive air ambulance service but initial results mean change in unlikely. 

However, Dr Cunningham dismisses concerns over the service being more expensive as she says there are already funding for medical consultants in ICU, Anesthesiology and emergency medicine. Evidence from Wales also suggests that it could even help with the recruitment of medical consultants.