UK ambulance receives global recognition for infant care

The Embrace Yorkshire & Humber Infant & Children’s Transport Service, part of Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, provides life-saving care by a team of specialist doctors and nurses who travel with their patients by road ambulances, helicopters and planes.

The team has been re-accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems (CAMTS) Global after being assessed on patient care and safety in the transport environment.

In 2017, Embrace became the first service to become dual accredited by CAMTS and CAMTS-EU (now rebranded as CAMTS Global). This year, the team welcomes its re-accreditation by CAMTS Global, which shows it meets a high standard for a service operating in Europe.

Acknowledgement of the team’s dedication

Dr Steve Hancock, Lead Consultant for Paediatrics at Embrace, said: “This re-accreditation is a great acknowledgement of the team’s dedication to continue to work to the highest possible international standard, and I’m really proud of that. It isn’t just the team who worked to achieve this, we are grateful to our partner organizations, who are all part of making sure we provide a quality and safe service.”

Head of Operations Philip Bridle added: “CAMTS accreditation provides a standard for everything. Embrace are a very specialist team undertaking the transfers on-board our aircraft and this accreditation demonstrates that high and safe standards are being met across the board – absolutely everything is inspected including the way each party integrates with the others to create a coherent operation, so re-accreditation such as this is fantastic.”

1,763 babies and children transferred in 2020

Embrace transfers children across the region in which its based but also, in some cases, across the country or around the world. In 2020, Embrace transferred 1,763 babies and children, carried out 23 helicopter missions, and 11 fixed-wing missions.

The past year has seen the team adapt to new ways of working during the Covid-19 pandemic and supporting colleagues across the region. One recent change includes supporting the rapid development of an adult critical care transport service for the region. This service began in February 2021 and Embrace hopes to support the delivery of a permanent adult transport team for Yorkshire later this year.

Recently, AirMed&Rescue shared the key considerations of air medical and ground physicians when deciding whether or not to activate an emergency medical helicopter transfer for neonatal patients.