NHS emergency preparedness, resilience and response
Our resilience and specialist operations team was involved in both responding to, and helping EEAST to prepare, if any untoward, adverse or serious major incidents, or terrorist attacks were to happen.
The team engaged during the year with a number of local resilience meetings and COVID-19 learning events which will help ensure the Trust is better prepared to respond to a future pandemic.
During the last year, resilience managers attended just under 1,000 local resilience forum meetings with partner agencies, while also attending just over 600 safety advisory group (SAG) meetings to support events.
The number of meetings and the time these meetings are taking is increasing year on year as SAG chairs start to take into account the learning coming from the Manchester arena inquiry and the engagement which is expected to come from the protect duty.
The team also expanded into the emergency operations centres to support.
Hazardous area response team (HART)
The hazardous area response team (HART) respond to patients requiring medical care in any hazardous environment.
The team also support ambulance crews responding to patients who are not necessarily in a hazardous area but who are hard-to-reach or where multiple clinicians are required.
Over the year this has seen the team respond to patients taken unwell in and around water, at height and within confined spaces.
The graph (above) shows the number of HART mobilisations during 2022/23.
Each year, English NHS trusts complete a statutory annual self-assessment and review of compliance against the NHS emergency preparedness, resilience and response framework, in line with the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.
We maintained our overall compliance as substantial and compliance with interoperable capabilities was also rated as substantial. To ensure continual development and following external audit, the department maintains and manages an action plan to ensure the Trust develops and is able to deliver a high-level service.
Our HART colleagues supported partner agencies at a number of protests where protestors had glued themselves to tankers and dug holes under roads and therefore prevented tankers from entering and leaving oil refineries. HART’s role was to ensure the clinical wellbeing of everyone on scene.
- We ran multi-agency training bringing partners from police, fire, health and other agencies together to respond to any potential marauding terrorist attack occurring on a train, both in a platform and away from the station, in a cutting. During the 14 exercises which ran during September and October 2022, just under 1,350 responders improved their clinical and command skills and gained a better understanding of how an incident of this nature would be managed and care delivered to those in need.
- We have been using the Airbox situational awareness software for the last three years and, following a grant from NHS Digital, the department has now rolled out Airbox to all levels of commander within the Trust. This software has allowed live time mapping, imagery and timelines to be shared between commanders irrespective of where they are operating, giving them real time information as it happens. This was a huge benefit to the Trust and commanders during a number of protests and VIP visits which occurred during the year.
- Part of the team’s role is to ensure the Trust, as well as individual departments, are prepared for an incident which affects their operational productivity. This business continuity planning proved hugely beneficial during the year with ambulance stations having to be temporarily closed and people moved to operate from other locations due to flooding and adverse incidents.
- The team continued to run the 'foundation command training course' for managers taking a command function at a critical or major incident. This training is in addition to the major incident training which is delivered to all new students who join EEAST, ensuring they are able to effectively respond to these significant incidents. Those commanders who are not trained or whose training has expired are being stood down as commanders until they have requalified in their role.