Buckie cardiac responder team launch fund-raising appeal for new life-saving equipment
A team of local life-saving volunteers has launched a fundraising campaign as they look to upgrade the vital service they provide.
Based in the Buckie area, the current seven-strong Wildcat Cardiac Responders operate under the Scottish Ambulance Service to help keep people suffering from cardiac arrests alive until paramedics arrive.
The team covers an area spanning 200 square miles, running roughly from Mosstodloch in the west to Sandend in the east and down to Keith in the south.
Team member Lorna Cameron said: “We get an alert via the GoodSAM app asking us to respond to a cardiac arrest along with some basic details, such as male/female, age, and if they’re still breathing.
“We’re all defibrillator trained and have three between the seven of us. Usually whoever has the defib when we get the call goes, but if necessary we can use public access defibs.
“What we’re looking to do now is take a step up and become Community First Responders. This basically means we’ll be able to do more to help people. We’ll be able to attend to a wider range of medical emergencies. Also, we’ll be carrying oxygen and other vital equipment to help keep people alive until the ambulance arrives.
“Our presence also acts as a bit of reassurance for both the patient and their loved ones that there’s someone there for them until help arrives.
“It makes a huge difference to have a team like this on hand for almost immediate callout to provide life-saving treatment.”
However, this upgrade does not come cheap, as Ms Cameron explained.
“To make the step up to Community First Responders we need to buy kitbags containing the likes of oxygen, blood pressure measuring devices, and so on.
“We’re aiming to have one kitbag between two.
“To do this we’re fundraising to raise £6000. At the moment we’ve raised around £2500. We’ve been reaching out to local businesses for sponsorship and Buckie Thistle has very kindly agreed to hold a fundraising 80s night in September to help us raise money.
To make a donation, visit the team’s Paypal fundraising page at paypal.me/buckiecfr and choose to pay by friends and family option.
Anyone interested in joining the team should get in touch at buckiewildcats@outlook.com
One of the team’s volunteers recently put his skills to good use when he helped save the life of a driver who suffered a heart attack at the wheel and crashed into a lamp post outside the Floor Studio store in Elgin he manages.
James Granitza, 47, who, like Ms Cameron, is a member of Buckie RNLI’s volunteer lifeboat crew, has been a Wildcat Cardiac Responder since 2017. A long-standing interest in the emergency services and a glance at an advert were to combine to see him sign up for the Wildcats.
He said: “I've always been interested in emergency services.
“I've done the Coastguard in the past and I was on the standoff vessels providing safety cover for the rigs, and it's just always something that's interested me.
“I'd seen the advert in the paper, or something on Facebook, and it was saying that this was starting up. I showed some interest and filled out the forms, got accepted into the volunteer role, got some training, and then went out on call.”
The number of times volunteers get called out varies wildly, with Mr Granitza explaining that three or four weeks can elapse with nothing and then they would have two or three a week. His personal record is three alerts in one day.
He said: “It does make you jump when the alert goes off.
“It's a bit of an adrenaline rush, but I've been doing it for so long now I just stay calm and take my time getting out of the house.”
Given the nature of the role, not every call-out has a happy ending but the close nature of the team means no-one has to cope alone.
Mr Granitza continued: “I think when we go to a job and it isn't a successful ending, we've always got support at the end of the phone with the Scottish Ambulance Service and also as a team here - this is what makes us the team.
“I can pick up the phone, they can pick up the phone to me. We had a job last year and for some, it was their first job. It wasn't a very good job, but we stayed connected. We had little chats. They kind of support each other.
“When it goes down, it goes down. We're professional. The training we've had keeps us calm.”
He went on to stress that while helping people suffering a cardiac arrest is a hugely important part of their role, it is by no means the full extent of what the team does.
“It's not always about just going in and dealing with a cardiac arrest. Sometimes it isn't a cardiac arrest that we actually get called to, but we're there just to support the family.
“I think a lot of people are glad to see somebody turn up, especially if the ambulance is outside of Buckie and then we're responding. You could be looking 15, 20 minutes. The longest we've had is about 40 minutes before an ambulance has turned up.
“We give that person the final chance. The family has seen somebody responding calmly. Like I said, it's not always a cardiac arrest. We've been to some things that actually is just about talking to the family.
“Sometimes we'll go to seizures and there's not a lot we can really do in that situation but just monitor the person, speak to the family, wait for the ambulance crews to turn up and do their bit and do their checks. We're not always just hands-on all the time. Sometimes it's just about speaking to the family when we go to these jobs, and like I said, it's a face.
“They see somebody that can obviously do what they need to do when they need to do it, but as I said, sometimes the paramedics will come in and they'll take over and I'll go off and maybe look to see what medication the patient takes. Sometimes we're just there to assist the ambulance, so we'll get the trolleys out the back. We'll go and fetch kit for them, we'll get stuff out of the bags for them.”
He added that by working closely with the ambulance service the team gets to know the local crews, which helps them work more closely together
People joining the team receive a day of basic training revolving around doing CPR and using a defibrillator which is followed up with regular training sessions every few months. The Buckie crew also holds their own training sessions during which they practice CPR and discuss various aspects of call-outs they have attended.
As to the difference the team made, Mr Granitza was in no doubt.
“We just give people that chance of survival. It's as simple as that.”
