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The Service
Specialist Response - Co Responders
Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service and South Central Ambulance Service started working together to improve patient care in Hampshire five years ago with Bordon, Romsey and New Milton being the first three fire stations involved in this life-saving initiative. Since then the scheme has expanded, first, in 2006, to include a further three stations; these were Liphook, Hartley Wintney and Horndean fire stations. All six units were extremely successful, responding to approximately 3,000 medical emergencies per year.
On the back of this success, the partnership was once again expanded in 2009 to include a further eight stations, Alresford, Andover (retained), Botley, Hamble, Hythe, Lymington, Ringwood and Petersfield fire stations.
It is anticipated that co-responders will soon be responding to a total of 10,000 emergency calls a year.
Co-responders are firefighters who are trained and assessed in basic life support and in the use of an automatic external defibrillator. They are dispatched to incidents such as cardiac arrests, asthmatic attacks, collapses/falls, chest pains, breathing difficulties, accidents in the home, work, sport/leisure and public places and provide basic medical care until the arrival of an emergency ambulance. Clinical evidence proves that patients in a life-threatening situation who receive this rapid intervention have better chances of survival.
The aim of co-responding is to have a suitably trained person at the scene of an incident, that is potentially life-threatening, within eight minutes. Co-responders are, on the whole, located in areas where their presence will have maximum benefit.
Once co-responder stations are identified and confirmed then training gets underway. This is provided by the ambulance service, and consists of two days intensive first aid training. The bulk of this is based around resuscitation and defibrillation. Re-certification and refresher training is given every six months.
The co-responder is mobilised by the Ambulance Control Centre. They receive the 999 call and once the call type has been identified they decide whether a co-responder will be mobilised. Mobilisation is done by calling the duty co-responder on an Ambulance Service supplied mobile phone. The duty co-responder takes the vehicle home which speeds up the response time. The duty co-responder must stay within the response area. The response area for the co-responder mirrors that of the station's fire ground. So upon receipt of a call they can simply jump into the vehicle and respond direct to the location of the call, as long as there are sufficient people available to crew the fire appliance, as crewing and mobilisation of Hampshire Fire and Rescue appliances will always take priority over the co-responder vehicle.
View co-responder station information:
Co-responder vehicles are supplied by South Central Ambulance Service, with the exception of New Milton who have a sponsored vehicle supplied by the Williams Bridge motor dealership. Each vehicle is sign written with fire and ambulance logos, along with 'Co-Responder' signs.
They also have blue lights and sirens. The vehicle carries comprehensive equipment including:
You can find more information in our Community Projects pages about Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service working with partner agencies within the Local Area Agreement to improve speed of response to medical emergencies in Hampshire.
