Meet the volunteer ambulance service saving lives across Bedfordshire - and asking for your help
A private ambulance service which handles around 1,000 calls every year is asking for help to continue its life-saving work across Bedfordshire.
The Beds & Herts Emergency Critical Care Scheme (BHECCS) was officially launched in February 2022 and consists of volunteer clinicians who use their free time to provide advanced medical and trauma care to patients who have suffered life-threatening injury or illness.
The service, which receives no Government funding, is based in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
The charity’s response vehicles cost more than £65,000 to purchase, while its consumables list totals more than £40,000.
Explaining how the service works, Kay Singh from BHECCS told us: “Responders are dispatched by East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust when a 999 call indicates that a patient may benefit from advanced interventions, senior clinical input or complex cases, such as pre-hospital anesthesia, invasive monitoring, or complex trauma management, as well as to high-acuity medical emergencies like cardiac arrest or sepsis.”
Volunteers often arrive at the scene of emergency incidents alongside or shortly after frontline ambulance crews.
BHECCS currently has 20 active clinicians, including pre-hospital doctors, critical care paramedics and paramedics, supported by a team of 30 emergency responders who focus on rapid community attendance for time-critical community emergencies.
The service uses state-of-the-art equipment, which includes a Zenix monitor and defibrillator, the most advanced in the market. Features include a large touchscreen and real-time clinical feedback to improve ventilation quality and deliver high-quality CPR.
The BHECCS sent us case studies of incidents they had helped with, which included one where a 45-year-old man suffered a sudden cardiac arrest at an airport while boarding a flight with his wife.
“Immediate CPR and life support were initiated by bystanders and airport staff,” the BHECCS said. “The patient was in full cardiac arrest upon the arrival of emergency services. Basic life support had been started, but ambulance crews were limited in their ability to provide advanced interventions.
“The BHECCS team arrived promptly and successfully restarted the patient’s heart, initiating hospital-level care on scene, including advanced airway management and mechanical ventilation, sedation to protect the brain and reduce secondary injury and full life-support measures typically only available in-hospital
“The team stabilised him at the airport and conveyed him directly to a specialist cardiac centre nearly an hour away.
“The patient received surgery approximately two hours sooner than would have been possible with standard care.”
He has since made a full recovery and is now living a healthy life.
BHECCS was created by Junaid Mughal, the service’s current chair of trustees, who began his ambulance service journey in 2008.
Speaking about the service, Junaid said: “I am really fortunate to work with a group of like-minded people who have supported us in creating a high-performing scheme that cares for people in their hour of need.
“We support the National Health Service by providing specialist life-saving care, usually only available in hospital, to the most seriously injured or unwell patients and offering support to their families.
“Most of our team generously volunteer their time to provide this care during their days off from their full-time jobs.
“We are also committed to educating local ambulance colleagues and hospital doctors and staff, fostering collaboration and sharing knowledge to develop our local clinicians."
BHECCS are keen to raise awareness of what they do, as Kay explained a lot of people believe the service is part of the National Health Service.
“We are keen to create a fundraising team who can drive charitable grant activity and corporate fundraising but also recognise the need for PR and marketing as without this people simply don't know we exist.
“We are now allowed to contact any patients we help and support unless they make contact with us.
“But during the most critical of times when we are saving a life, no one really thinks about who it was that helped them - it's predominantly and wrongly assumed we are part of the NHS.
“We do what we can and work as hard as we can, given we have to be focused on doing our day jobs, then volunteering with BHECCS and squeezing in other work where we can.”
The service requires public donations to keep its work going, and these can be made through the BHECCS own website.
Anyone with time and skills to volunteer their expertise in technology, marketing, administration, funding, finance, consumables and vehicles is invited to get in touch with BHECCS by contacting the service through its online form.
> A previous version of this article stated the service can also treat patients in neighbouring counties including Buckinghamshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire and London. Thames Valley Air Ambulance has since said the service does not operate within its area.