Sussex Ambulance Service was the

ambulance service Emergency medical services (EMS), also known as ambulance services or paramedic services, are emergency services that provide urgent pre-hospital treatment and stabilisation for serious illness and injuries and transport to definitive care. ...

for the County of

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

from 1 April 1995 until 1 July 2006, when it was succeeded by a

South East Coast Ambulance Service The South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAmb) is the NHS ambulance services trust for south-eastern England, covering Kent (including Medway), Surrey, West Sussex and East Sussex (including Brighton and Hove). It also cov ...

also covering Surrey and Kent. The trust provided ambulance services to a population of 1.5million people, and was formed by the merger of the East and West Sussex ambulance services. In 2001, plans were announced for a merger with Kent Ambulance Service, but these were shelved six months later after local resistance was encountered. A

Commission for Health Improvement The Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) was a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department of Health of the United Kingdom from 2001 until 2004, when its functions were subsumed by the Healthcare Commission. CHI was established by ...

(CHI) began a clinical governance review of the trust in 2002. Its report in 2003 criticised managerial staff at the trust for having inadequate systems to communicate with staff. In 2005, it emerged that the trust’s despatch system had suffered computer failure four times over a period of a few months. The service started to use

thrombolysis Thrombolysis, also called fibrinolytic therapy, is the breakdown (lysis) of blood clots formed in blood vessels, using medication. It is used in ST elevation myocardial infarction, stroke, and in cases of severe venous thromboembolism (massive p ...

for suspected heart attacks in October 2003; by 2005 they had treated their 50th patient with this. The service had established a

community first responder A Community first responder (CFR), is a person available to be dispatched by an ambulance control centre to attend medical emergencies in their local area. They can be members of the public, who have received training in life-saving interventions s ...

scheme by 2006. In 2000, the trust had an agreement with the Gambian Government to provide training to some African emergency service workers. Over a period of a few years, a small number of students travelled from The Gambia to Sussex to be trained to the level of ambulance technician.

References

{{UK ambulance service, state=autocollapse Defunct NHS trusts Defunct ambulance services in England Health in Sussex

See also

References