Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) is delighted to announce that it has received a grant of £20k from Air Ambulances UK, the organisation which represents the UK’s air ambulance charities, to help fund its vital Patient and Family Aftercare Service.
(Every patient and family connected to KSS can use the charity’s Patient and Family Aftercare Service)
The KSS Patient and Family Aftercare Service supports former patients, their families and bereaved families, long after their medical emergency is over to ensure the best possible recovery journey by answering questions about their care, arranging base visits and directing patients to specialist support.
Throughout the charity’s history, KSS has invited patients to meet crew when the time is right. Since the dedicated Patient and Family Aftercare Service was created in 2021 the charity has arranged 138 meetings with crew for 103 patients and 35 bereaved families.
The Air Ambulances UK Grant will help ensure that every patient and family connected to KSS continues to have access to its Patient and Family Aftercare Service. It will make ensure patients who contact the service are welcomed into a supportive community and feel informed and empowered during recovery.
KSS Patient and Family Aftercare Lead, Stu Plumbley, explained: “We want people we help to know that there is no ceiling on the care we offer.
“Our service has been shaped by the patients and families we have already supported. We focus on visits and peer support, as the biggest needs identified by patients were to understand what happened on the day of their accident or incident and to meet others who have experienced similar medical incidents.”
Visits offer patients and families the chance to meet the crews who helped them to understand more about the medical emergency and the treatment and care provided.
Peer support group sessions enable people who are connected through a lived experience, such as a cardiac arrest, to share in their personal experiences and help and support each other.
The KSS Patient and Family Aftercare Service is still developing. A senior doctor has recently been appointed to the team along with a senior nurse who will lead the initiation of the aftercare journey at one of major trauma centres that KSS works with.
The multidisciplinary Patient and Family Aftercare Team has experience in frontline pre-hospital emergency medicine within a major trauma centre, in-hospital clinical care as well as creating in-person relationships supporting community work. Together they provide people-centred, tailored care and ongoing support. This long-term care is an essential part of our service which helps to enable the best possible recovery for individuals and each family, following the most serious medical emergencies.
As well as patient engagement, research is fundamental to shaping the team’s work. Two published studies have already played a pivotal role in guiding the ongoing development of the service.
You can find out more about the work of the KSS Patient and Family Aftercare Service by visiting www.aakss.org.uk/patients or emailing patients@aakss.org.uk Enquiries are welcomed from former patients and bereaved families, no matter when the incident occurred.