Campaign: South Central Ambulance Service Oxfordshire responder manager Dick Tracey with a defibrillator in Eynsham
While I have no doubt that Dick Tracey’s efforts to place more defibrillators around the county is commendable, how many lives have actually been saved with them? (I would define saved as patients that have been discharged alive from hospital).
From my own experience (17 years as a paramedic), defibs without adequate drug support are little more than placebos to make the public feel safer, when the reality is that the centralisation of ambulance cover has left rural communities in particular without adequate emergency care – as I forecast it would in 2000.
The level of cover is, quite frankly, a disgrace.
GRAHAM WHITE (UK paramedic of the year 1996)
Church Street
Kingham
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