The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service is an ambulance service that serves the whole of Northern Ireland. As with other ambulance services in the United Kingdom, it does not charge its patients directly for its services, but instead receives funding through general taxation. It responds to medical emergencies in Northern Ireland with the 300-plus ambulance vehicles at its disposal. Its fleet includes mini-buses, ambulance officers' cars, support vehicles, RRVs and accident and emergency ambulances.
The Service employs approximately 1,300 staff of which approximately 420 are Paramedics, 300 are EMTs and 100 are Control staff, which work shift patterns to ensure the service is operational 24/7. They are based across 46 stations & sub-stations, 2 Control Centres and a Regional Ambulance Training Centre. It responds to approximately 201,000 emergency calls per year with a combination of traditional emergency ambulances with two crew members, and rapid response vehicles crewed by a single paramedic. RRV's respond mostly to calls where there is a potential immediate life-threat because they can respond more quickly than a conventional ambulance. Double-crew ambulances respond to both Emergency and Non-emergency calls as well as providing critical-care transfers between hospitals. The Trust aims to provide at least one Paramedic to every emergency call by staffing each double-crew, emergency ambulance with two Paramedics or a Paramedic and an Emergency Medical Technician and utilising Rapid Response Vehicles. The Trust has not adopted the controversial use of ECA's in the way many other UK Ambulance Services have. In 2019 the service entered a partnership with the Ulster University to deliver a Foundation Degree in Paramedic Science, with the first cohort of trainees graduating in December 2019. Further cohorts are scheduled until a BSc honours degree commences in line with future requirements for professional registration of UK paramedics. In addition to the emergency service, NIAS has a fleet of Patient Care Service vehicles which are used for more routine patient transport to/from hospital. Within the Patient Care Service there are both single-crewed 'sitting case' vehicles as well as double-crewed 'intermediate care vehicles' which carry a stretcher. In 2016 NIAS was commissioned to provide a Helicopter Emergency Medical Servicefor the first time in Northern Ireland which was by then the only region of the UK not to have one. Following a public consultation, they partnered with the charity Air Ambulance Northern Ireland who provide the aircraft and airbase, with the doctors and paramedics provided by NIAS. The service undertook its first live mission in August 2017.
Performance
NIAS currently has a target time of 8 minutes to reach the scene of an emergency although, during December 2017 only 47.5% of this target was met therefore the average response time in Northern Ireland was 16 minutes 10 seconds. Currently the trust works with volunteer and private ambulance services to help cope and meet key response times, this is due to the current increased demand and squeeze on public spending across Northern Ireland Staff have expressed concern by the growing pressures they face and overall low morale across the service. The ambulance service aims to restructure the service to cope with future increased demand. In September 2018, the ambulance service requested an additional £30 million in funding from the Department of Health to restructure the service and to recruit an additional 300 staff members, most of whom would be paramedics, EMTs and emergency call takers. The recruitment is meant to quicken response times and relieve pressure on staff.
