HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Sandpiper Trust is a Scottish-based charity whose aims are related to improving pre-hospital immediate care in remote and rural Scotland. It receives no Government, NHS or Local Authority funding. They are a major supporter of
BASICS Scotland The British Association for Immediate Care Scotland (BASICS Scotland) is an organisation involved with prehospital care. It has the aims of providing encouragement and aid with the formation of immediate care schemes and to provide training to s ...
.


History and Origin

Sandpiper Trust was founded in 2001 after the tragic death of a 14-year-old child called Sandy Dickson in an accident in 2000. This accident highlighted to the founders (his family) that critical illness does not respect geography, and that an ambulance can not always be rapidly accessible when accidents occur in remote and rural areas. This led the trust to provide life-saving emergency medical equipment (in the Sandpiper Bag) to rural clinicians. With the hope of enabling the provision of prehospital emergency care in situations where ambulance response times are long, or where the skills of a senior clinician (doctor, nurse or paramedic) may be a valuable augmentation to the statutory ambulance service, the
Scottish Ambulance Service The Scottish Ambulance Service ( gd, Seirbheis Ambaileans na h-Alba) is part of NHS Scotland, which serves all of Scotland's population. The Scottish Ambulance Service is governed by a special health board and is funded directly by the Health ...
. Sandpiper Trust also provides
BASICS Scotland The British Association for Immediate Care Scotland (BASICS Scotland) is an organisation involved with prehospital care. It has the aims of providing encouragement and aid with the formation of immediate care schemes and to provide training to s ...
volunteer responders with the technology to connect them to the
Scottish Ambulance Service The Scottish Ambulance Service ( gd, Seirbheis Ambaileans na h-Alba) is part of NHS Scotland, which serves all of Scotland's population. The Scottish Ambulance Service is governed by a special health board and is funded directly by the Health ...
despatch system, monitor their location for safety purposes, and allow communication with the ambulance control room and other emergency services. Currently a number of responders are provided with Airwave digital radios, while others have vehicle locator systems.


Key individuals

The patron of Sandpiper Trust since its inception has been
Gavin Hastings Andrew Gavin Hastings, (born 3 January 1962) is a Scottish former rugby union player. A fullback, he is widely regarded to be one of the best ever Scottish rugby players and was one of the outstanding players of his generation, winning 61 c ...
. Hastings has hosted many events for The Sandpiper trust and continues to generously devote his time and energy to supporting the Trust. The trust has four trustees; Penny Dickson, Aly Dickson, Claire Maitland and Caroline Ross-Stewart. It also has two medical advisors, to ensure they are able to facilitate rural immediate medical care to the best of their abilities, these are: Dr Ewen McLeod and Dr Ben Price.


Charitable objectives

Sandpiper Trust has four core objectives. Firstly to work towards the relief of the suffering (from illness or injury) of people in Scotland through the provision of immediate medical care, secondary to facilitate the advancement of the study of immediate medical care through the provision of education and training across Scotland. Thirdly the provision of medical equipment to facilitate the first objective and finally, relieving human suffering through the promotion of medical research.


Fundraising


Sandpiper Cookbook

As part of their fund-raising activities, Sandpiper Trust produced their own cookbook, compiled by Claire Maitland and published by Finks Publishing in 2009. It includes recipes from a wide range of authors/chefs including
Gordon Ramsay Gordon James Ramsay (; born ) is a British chef, restaurateur, television personality and writer. His restaurant group, Gordon Ramsay Restaurants, was founded in 1997 and has been awarded 17 Michelin stars overall; it currently holds a tot ...
, it also contains a number of cocktails (including
Tiger Woods Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer. He is tied for first in PGA Tour wins, ranks second in men's major championships, and holds numerous golf records. * * * Woods is widely regarded as ...
exclusive wedding cocktail) and unusually for a cookbook, essential emergency medical tips.


''The Swallow, The Owl and The Sandpipe''r

The trust also produced this text in 2013, described as "A collection of thought provoking prose and poetry, to help provide comfort, strength and support during difficult times", and listed as a motivational self-help guide on Amazon. It is ranked at number 29 in the amazon best-sellers list for poetry anthologies.


Other fundraising activities

In addition to sales of these two books, the trust also receives donations from organisations and individuals, and in 2021 a Highlands family raised a significant amount for the charity through
open water swimming Open water swimming is a swimming discipline which takes place in outdoor bodies of water such as open oceans, lakes, and rivers. The beginning of the modern age of open water human swimming, swimming is sometimes taken to be May 3, 1810, when L ...
. The charity also regularly runs charity auctions to raise money, and has been donated auction items such as handwritten lyrics from
Annie Lennox Ann Lennox (born 25 December 1954) is a Scottish singer-songwriter, political activist and philanthropist. After achieving moderate success in the late 1970s as part of the New wave music, new wave band the Tourists, she and fellow musician D ...
, luxury Scottish fishing trips, and sculptures, among other things.


Projects


Sandpiper Bag

Sandpiper Trust has developed the internationally respected Sandpiper Bag, which is used across Scotland by
BASICS Scotland The British Association for Immediate Care Scotland (BASICS Scotland) is an organisation involved with prehospital care. It has the aims of providing encouragement and aid with the formation of immediate care schemes and to provide training to s ...
responders, in Australia through the newly formed charity Sandpiper Australia and is the official immediate care bag for the Faculty of Prehospital Care examinations at the
Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) is a professional organisation of surgeons. The College has seven active faculties, covering a broad spectrum of surgical, dental, and other medical practices. Its main campus is located on ...
. Each bag contains over 50 items of life-saving medical equipment, these are organised into removable pouches, allowing them to be passed out to different team members to facilitate parallel working in acute situations. To date over a thousand Sandpiper Bags have been distributed across Scotland and beyond. The 1000th bag was presented by
Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...
in 2016.


Sandpiper Emergency Medicines Pouch

In 2021 The Sandpiper Trust funded and in conjunction with
BASICS Scotland The British Association for Immediate Care Scotland (BASICS Scotland) is an organisation involved with prehospital care. It has the aims of providing encouragement and aid with the formation of immediate care schemes and to provide training to s ...
, developed the Emergency Medicines pouch for active BASICS Scotland volunteer responders. The drug pouch contains an array of medicines required for the initial management and stabilisation of critically unwell patients across rural Scotland.


Wildcat Project

The Sandpiper Wildcat Project was a research programme focussing on saving lives after out of hospital cardiac arrest, through optimising the
chain of survival The chain of survival refers to a series of actions that, properly executed, reduce the mortality associated with cardiac arrest, sudden cardiac arrest. Like any chain, the chain of survival is only as strong as its weakest link. The six interdepend ...
in rural
Grampian Grampian ( gd, Roinn a' Mhonaidh) was one of nine former local government regions of Scotland created in 1975 by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 and abolished in 1996 by the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. The region to ...
, Scotland. The driving hypothesis being that providing enhanced training and equipment a team of volunteer community first responders, who are then targeted to areas where
Scottish Ambulance Service The Scottish Ambulance Service ( gd, Seirbheis Ambaileans na h-Alba) is part of NHS Scotland, which serves all of Scotland's population. The Scottish Ambulance Service is governed by a special health board and is funded directly by the Health ...
response times can be prolonged would lead to earlier, effective resuscitation, hopefully resulting in improved patient outcomes. The project won the Blue Light Hero award at the Pride of Aberdeen awards in 2017.


COVID-19 pandemic response

During the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, the trust distributed over 700 pulse oximeters to remote and rural GP practices throughout Scotland, to aid with the diagnosis of, and subsequent monitoring of patients affected by
COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
. These have been used in the
Orkney Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...
and
Shetland Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the no ...
Islands, Coll, Arran, Tomintoul, Killin, Callander, Strachur, Mull, Galloway, Kenmay, Skye and other practices throughout Grampian.


References


External links

*
Twitter account
*{{Scottish charity, SC031165 Charities based in Scotland Organizations established in 2001