What We Do
Chain of Survival
If someone suffers an out of hospital Cardiac Arrest and then certain things happen in a certain order, the chance of that person's survival is hugely increased - this concept in known as the 'Chain of Survival'.
All Community First Responders are trained to perform CPR and early defibrillation where necessary until an ambulance arrives. We are also able to provide care and reassurance to patients and their families.
We are governed by the Scottish Ambulance Service so we adhere to their policies including those surrounding patient confidentiality.
Dispatching
999 is the emergency number to call for an ambulance. An ambulance and a Community First Responder are dispatched at exactly the same time. You do not need to call us, it will be done for you.
We are only called out to you if the Scottish Ambulance Control Centre believe that our training is relevant.
We aim to cover all out of hour GP services, 1800 - 0800 hours Monday - Friday, weekends and bank holidays.
Our training does not cover us for major trauma, medical emergencies involving children, mental health issues, sexual related incidents, alcohol, drugs or road traffic accidents.
Last Year
We were fully operational prior to the first Covid - 19 lockdown in March 2020. As a result of the pandemic a number of our volunteers have had to withdraw either because they are deemed to be in vulnerable categories or for personal reasons.
Despite the reduced number of trained volunteers we have coved as as much GP out of hours as we possibly can. As the vaccination program has been rolled out we have steadily increased our coverage.
1 of our trained responders has undertaken the Royal Life Saving Scotland (RLSS) Instructors Course enabling them to run free workshops on 'Save an Adult's Life, Save a Child's Life, Save a Baby's Life and Save a Life (AED) - using a defibri