Fifteen Minutes

Scott Bateman MBE,
Founder of First Response.

When my father suffered a Heart Attack some years ago the response time of the Ambulance to the incident was in excess of fifteen minutes. Although CPR was initiated almost immediately the length of time until Advanced Life Support (ALS) was initiated was around twenty minutes, which in almost all cases is unsurvivable. I felt that this delay was unacceptable and had it been much shorter my Father may have survived the attack. Since this incident I have researched ways of reducing the time to receipt of ALS, thus improving the patients chance of surviving the Heart Attack.

"Emergency First Responder service"

In 1998 I was offered a short sabbatical from my career in the RAF, during which I decided to see if I could employ some of my ideas in the hope that lives could be saved. In July of that year I approached Lincolnshire Ambulance Service with my idea of utilising volunteers from the RAF to provide an emergency First Responder service in their County. After a short secondment to that Trust to finalise the details of the Scheme, the scheme was launched on the sixth of October at the RAF College Cranwell.

in excess of five minutes

Since its launch the scheme has gone from strength to strength consistently producing results that are a credit to the commitment of the volunteers. Although it is difficult to measure the success of a Scheme such as this, I am sure that any Scheme that can provide aid to a patient in excess of five minutes, on average, faster than it does presently surely is a success.