Emergency transfer services in the Channel Islands say they provide a “vital lifeline” during the toughest moments of patients’ lives.
The Jersey Emergency Transfer Service (JETS) operates a plane to transport patients experiencing medical emergencies from the islands to NHS hospitals in the UK for treatment.
It is required as with populations of 65,000 in Guernsey and 105,000 in Jersey, there is a limit to what hospital services residents can access close to home. JETS manager, Ryan McNay, said it transferred 304 patients last year.
Dave Miller, who manages off-island logistics for Guernsey patients, said his team provides patients with a “hand to hold” through those difficult journeys.
‘Numbers were increasing’
McNay began working in the service in 2007, and at that time, he said there were just “two transfers a week”.
“Numbers were increasing, so that’s when the JETS service started,” he said.
McNay described the operation as “bed to bed”.
“We stabilise the patients in the hospital first. We assess them, we make referrals to the UK if they need it and then we actually prepare them. We find a team and use the aircraft and resources we’ve got on island to then transfer them to the UK.”
McNay continued: “We’ve got one aircraft and we can call upon others. We’ve also got the back-up of helicopters and the coast guard when we need it.
“It’s a mini-intensive care unit, we take a range of patients from level 1, which could be a patient that needs a stretcher for cancer treatment, right up to level 3, which could be an intensive care patient that needs to be ventilated.
“We can take whole ventilators, we’ve also got facilities to take incubators for babies, and we also take psychiatric patients and patients from the prison too.
“It’s a vital service; it’s a lifeline service… we’d be in a bit of a fix [without it]. Last year we did 304 transfers, and the year before that was 360, almost one a day.”
The majority of patients are treated in Southampton or London. But some go to Oxford, Cambridge, Wigan and Salford.
