Guernsey & Alderney Ambulance Services host American work experience student

An American student evaluating pre-hospital healthcare around the world has praised both Guernsey and Alderney's ambulance services.

Kenzie Bay, a 23-year-old Health and Humanism student at Whitman College in Washington, is on a global fact-finding mission to explore how prehospital care is delivered in different communities and geographies.

Supported by the Watson Foundation, she is visiting Tanzania, India, Thailand, Nepal, Estonia, Norway, the UK and El Salvador as part of her research.

Kenzie spent two weeks with ambulance crews in Guernsey and Alderney,

During her visit, she joined training exercises and emergency call-outs, including complex patient extrication and pit-stop CPR.

“The ambulance service in Guernsey is a testament to the idea that EMS is shaped by its community; it has been built and supported by its residents since the start and is specifically designed to support the Guernsey environment.

"The involvement of fire services, community first responders with AEDs, and the Flying Christine III are all components of extending the ambulance service's reach and delivering care to small islands without the ease of access to a metropolitan EMS system.

“I also observed how professional relationships and patient care are influenced by community size, as relationships and rapport were often already established between ambulance, hospital, and firefighting staff, allowing for more efficient and greater continuity of care.

"Given the greater proportion of elderly patients in the population, exposure to this patient group was higher than I had previously experienced.

"I appreciated the opportunity to learn from skilled Paramedics, EMTs and ECAs who have become highly knowledgeable at assessing and managing this specific patient population with multiple comorbidities, polypharmacy, and complex social contexts.”

Alderney's ambulance service is a satellite service provided by Guernsey and run by a small but dedicated team of ambulance crew.

This was the smallest healthcare system Kenzie visited.

“Alderney was a fascinating environment to learn from, as the EMS system has to plan around a higher level of uncertainty and preparedness while balancing the appropriate level of staffing and resources for the community's size.

"The island occupies a difficult position in systems development as it is too large to rely primarily on a community first responder model like Sark or Herm, yet too small to warrant the level of services present in Guernsey. 

"Determining the level of resources in Alderney is further complicated by the island’s need for external assistance in the event of high-acuity cases, along with the consideration that access to external resources may be delayed by weather or other operational constraints.

"While navigating this geographical tension is not necessarily unique it is a good example of geography remaining a pivotal determinant of emergency care requiring resiliency of resources to mitigate its impact and ensure equitable access to emergency care.”