Trust's praise for ambulance service but . . . Collapse drama as board meets

Reality struck at a routine ambulance board meeting when Ludlow's new paramedic raced to help a man who had collapsed.

While members of the West Midlands and Shropshire Ambulance Trust were wading through facts and figures in a conference room at Ludlow Assembly Rooms, Sarah Low, from Ludlow's emergency response team dashed out to attend an incident in the venue's hallway.

"I was called and told that someone had collapsed," said Sarah afterwards.

"I went downstairs and provided emergency care.

"The ambulance was there in minutes.

"The man was okay but he was taken to hospital for check-ups."

Trust member, Doctor Ian Robertson-Steel also briefly left the meeting to help the man.

"There was a medical incident in the hallway," he said.

"Fortunately Sarah was just up here attending the meeting and was able to rush downstairs as soon as her pager went off.

Reinforce

"And, as if to reinforce the praise given to Shropshire Ambulance service in the meeting, an ambulance was at the scene in under six minutes."

A main topic at the meeting was the use of community defibrillators.

More than 100 are on their way to Shropshire and will be installed at places where there are large groups of people.

Staff will be trained how to use the mostly automatic heart resuscitating machines.

The Shropshire Ambulance Service received praise at the meeting for beating government targets on response times and coming out of last month with a one-off £35,000 surplus.