Over the past few months and under the direction of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE), the National Ambulance Resilience Unit (NARU) has been working with senior representatives from the Fire and Police Services to discuss further improvements in the way blue light services work together in response to major incidents.
A national programme of work has been developed to ensure that the blue light services work together as effectively as possible at all levels of command, part of which has been the joint-development of a new presentation to help improve the way services interact and work together on scene. The presentation can be accessed here.
Says NARU Director Keith Prior: “Although we know interoperability works well in the UK every day, we have jointly developed an awareness presentation designed to secure additional improved joint operational understanding at the scene of an incident. The awareness presentation and aide memoir does not introduce any new procedures but highlights some areas where joint working can be enhanced.
“This awareness presentation is for Incident Commanders and the slide content is enhanced with sufficient notes to provide the correct level of awareness. This is a good initiative which builds on the work done for pre-Olympics and beyond.”
This is the first stage of the work of the blue light interoperability board which has been agreed with the Secretary of State for Health, Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities. Peter Bradley (National Ambulance Director), Anthony Marsh (AACE lead for EPRR) and Keith Prior (Director of NARU) are the ambulance representatives on the Interoperability Board. More interoperability work is planned over the coming months, details of which will appear on this site.