ON THURSDAY, August 25, three-year-old Isla Wiggin and her mum were caught up in an eight-vehicle collision on the A34 just outside Oxford.

Isla died from her injuries two days later but her mother and everyone else involved survived.

When we reported that "Thames Valley Air Ambulance had been called but was not required", it could not have been further from the truth.

While the helicopter itself did not take anyone to hospital, the doctors who arrived on board provided potentially life-saving treatment to everyone caught up in the crash.

On Thursday Pete Hughes visited the air ambulance crew at RAF Benson ahead of National Air Ambulance Week, September 19-25, and discovered how they are quietly revolutionising emergency medical care.

IT'S an extremely efficient system: specialist doctors stay in hospitals and have patients brought to them for treatment, meaning they can treat the highest number possible, while paramedics go out to emergencies and provide more generalised care to keep people alive until they can be taken to a doctor.

But what if it was different? What if doctors went out to emergencies and carried out surgery at the first opportunity?

That is exactly what Thames Valley Air Ambulance is already doing.

The charity, which costs £2.2m a year to run and receives no government funding, believes it is quietly instigating a revolution in pre-hospital emergency medicine.

Clinical governance lead Syed Masud says: "It says "air ambulance" on our logo but it's no longer about the helicopter: our mission is to provide the best clinical care for the most critically-ill patients.

"Any way we can get to that person – be it boat, Landrover, helicopter, scooter or a skateboard – I will take it if I can get to them.

"If we can get to them quickly we can give them the highest level of clinical care and that is what is changing."

In this country, for the most part, doctors are allowed to do things which most paramedics are not: deliver anaesthetics on the roadside; surgical procedures like cutting a hole in someone's neck or chest to help them breath or opening someone's chest because they have been stabbed in the heart.

South Central Ambulance Service like most ambulance services predominantly sends paramedics to emergencies.

Thames Valley Air Ambulance sends doctors and paramedics to emergencies in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hampshire.

Mr Masud says the charity's team of 15 doctors and 11 paramedics are nothing short of "elite".

What's more, he says: "This massive gold standard of care should be spread out to the masses – it doesn't matter how ill you are.

"If a 64-year-old in the Cotswolds has a simple urinary tract infection it could become so disabling it is life-threatening.

"What we're trying to achieve is that if someone has a medical emergency at 2am they still get the best team whether they get stabbed, run over or have a urine infection."

When it was founded in 2000, the charity provided what it now calls "swoop-and-scoop" care: picking patients up and getting them to a hospital as quickly as possible.

Since then, the way hospitals treat emergency patients has changed: in the Thames Valley, trauma treatment has been centralised to just two hospitals – Southampton General and the John Radcliffe in Oxford.

That means those centres can focus on trauma and improve their quality, but it also means that many patients injured across the four counties have a lot further to travel.

That is where TVAA stepped in.

Head of communications Sarah Williamson says: "Now, we bring the hospital to the patient: we can do on-scene blood transfusions, surgery – it's incredible.

"It's breaking down the vital seconds within that golden hour from trauma to treatment."

The charity is also funding innovative new technology.

Last year it unveiled a new helicopter equipped with night vision equipment and flood-lighting which means that the team can fly at night for the first time.

The chopper now flies 20 hours a day and is attending an extra three incidents a week on top of the average 21 flights it was doing already.

The charity has also rolled-out its own unique video communications system: doctors now wear body cameras which they can use to give HQ a live stream of what they're dealing with.

Mr Masud hopes it could even help tackle the national bed-blocking crisis in which the John Radcliffe is one of the worst offenders.

He said: "The news about A&E waits and how we are buckling under the pressure is all true.

"But now if one of our doctors rings me up with an 84-year-old who's relatively well and has a problem which can be sorted by a GP in the next 48 hours I can look at him and say 'he looks fine, leave him in his home'.

"He doesn't need to go to hospital where he would sit for 20 hours and nothing is achieved but he gets a hospital infection."

Groundbreaking technology like this is entirely funded by £2.2m of public donations every year.

So does it feel strange that this quiet revolution in emergency care is being funded by people , rather than the Government?

Mr Masud, who is himself an NHS employee although funded by the charity, emphatically says "no".

"I will always say the same thing: I don't want them to pay for it.

"The NHS does fantastic work on the very limited funds we have, but it works at a very slow pace simply because it is made up of huge organisations and moving quickly on ideas just isn't possible.

"Small organisations, the people working in garages at home, might have an idea then it might go onto a bigger level.

"Because we are funded by the people not the NHS, we have autonomy.

"Theresa May might give £12m to the NHS, but the day she leaves Number 10 someone else might take all that funding away.

Mr Masud also says that having to answer to the real people who fund the air ambulance team also keeps the charity in check.

"Most jobs I go to people will say 'I saw your collection tin the other day and put something in – I never thought I would be helping myself'.

"If I stand in front of a room full of people and tell them what we have done with their money that gives me great satisfaction."

Everyone who works for Thames Valley Air Ambulance takes pains to stress how hugely grateful they are for every donation that comes in.

But their gratitude is clear from the enthusiasm that everyone has for their work.

Mr Masud enthuses: "Four years ago we were probably in League 2, Division 3 – now we're in the Premiership and consistently pushing that forward.

"We have had to make mammoth changes in our understanding of pre-hospital emergency medicine.

"We will consistently push and look to the future."