The Essex Air Ambulance is a Eurocopter EC 135 T2.
Aircraft Facts
- The helicopter is powered by 2 Arrius gas turbine engines, each with 750 horse power. It also has full single engine capability allowing it to take off and fly with one engine if necessary.
- The Air Ambulance flies at around 150 miles per hour (138 knots) - cruising speed in still air. The helicopter is able to reach the farthest point in Essex in approx 15 minutes.
- The maximum flying time to the nearest hospital from anywhere is Essex is 8 minutes. Saving vital time when conveying emergency patients.
- The helicopter carries full life-support medical equipment, including space to hold an incubator and is able to carry up to 2 patients at any one time – one on a stretcher, one sitting.
- Normal flight crew is a pilot, paramedic and a doctor of at least registrar qualification enabling vital pre-hospital skills and techniques to be brought to a patient at a scene enabling life-saving procedures to start at the earliest opportunity.
- Normal flight height is around 1,000 feet but the helicopter may fly as low as 500 feet on a mission.
- Patients can be loaded into the helicopter by both the side and rear doors.
- The aircraft has space to carry a doctor or patient’s relative if necessary (particularly important if the patient is a child).
- The helicopter has the ability to access remote parts of Essex quickly. It is not affected by high tides or the ever-increasing traffic congestion on our roads and country lanes. The helicopter can also reach areas inaccessible to land vehicles including woods, beaches, docks and golf courses.
Medical Facts
- Essex and Herts Air Ambulance Trust works with East of England Ambulance Service Trust to develop and provide health care for the critically ill and injured in the County.
- The Charity has recently improved its Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) with the introduction of specially trained Doctors and Flight Paramedics.
- The HEMS team can bring hospital quality care to the scene of an incident and take patients to specialist hospitals that can provide the most appropriate medical and surgical help, which may be further away than the nearest hospital to the incident. Ultimately this reduces the time to it takes to give a patient the most appropriate care and reducing the need to transfer them further.
- The team carries out some emergency surgical procedures and is able to administer medication for people with severe injuries.
- A general anaesthetic to very sick patients at the scene.
- The team ensures best practice and the Charity is a founder member of UK Hems.
- Tasking this resource to patients where it can make a difference is vital and medical information from scene is essential. The East of England Ambulance Service Trust’s dispatchers in the ambulance control rooms are a vital link in the service.
- The team debriefs after all calls and all cases are reviewed by Consultants in Accident and Emergency.
- The team also rehearses emergency drills regularly and conducts a monthly governance day where review cases and procedures are reviewed.