Guernsey’s ambulance service experienced a period of high demand over the Bank Holiday weekend, with a total of 36 cases between midnight and midnight on Saturday 27th May.
Head of Operations, Dean de la Mare said: “Two of our teams experienced incredibly busy shifts on Saturday responding to a total of 36 calls during the 24 hour period, which is the highest number of calls responded to on record for one day.
“We are incredibly proud of all our clinicians who ensured that all calls are responded to promptly and all patients were treated with the usually high level of care and compassion, despite the high volume of calls being dealt with during this time.”
There was no one specific reason or particular situation which lead to the increase, but cases included various medical conditions, falls, mobility issues, trauma and intoxicated patients.
Going into the weekend ambulance crews responded to 19 calls on Friday, but demand dipped below average on Sunday with just 16 calls and 21 cases were recorded on Monday.
999 calls in Guernsey are categorised using a world class clinical triage system which means the most urgent and highest category of emergencies will get an immediate blue lights and sirens response. However, for less urgent calls the average response time will be longer and the ambulance will travel at normal road speed, so may take longer to arrive.
Category one emergencies have a target response time of 8 minutes. For category two emergencies the ambulance response aims to arrive within 14 minutes. For urgent category three calls there is a target response time of 30 minutes and for less urgent category 4 calls the ambulance service aims to attend within 2 hours.