As part of the development of the Health Service Executive a National Ambulance Service was established in 2005. This new organisation replaced the eight Regional Ambulance Services that existed under the former Health Board structure. The objective is to provide clinically appropriate and timely pre-hospital emergency care and patient/client transport services. This includes working closely with other healthcare professionals in order to achieve the most suitable integrated health care service. As part of the process, modern technology and clinical practice guidance are used and this will continue to be a feature as the service develops into the future.

The Service operates from 94 Stations located throughout the Country and is controlled from 14 Command and Control centres. There are approximately 1350 staff involved in the provision of Ambulance Services. A wide range of vehicles are used and their suitability is constantly being reviewed both in terms of European Standards and developing models of pre-hospital emergency care and patient transport in line with identified international models of best practice.

Scope of the Ambulance Service

Immediate responses are provided to emergency calls, responses to urgent calls are largely determined by appropriate medical professionals and responses to other calls are on a planned basis. In order to achieve more effective responses to emergency calls, a spatial analysis study commenced in 2007 and the outcome of this study will indicate patterns of demand and will provide the basis for deployment arrangements and distribution of resources in the future.
There are currently two critical care retrieval programmes in operation with a third scheduled for 2007. The current programmes are the Mobile Intensive Care and the Neo-national Services. The Paediatric Retrieval Service will be the new service to commence in 2007. As part of these programmes a hospital based critical care team travels with each patient during the ambulance transfer. The Ambulance Service has an arrangement with the Air Corps to provide for air ambulance retrieval and critical care transfers. The scope of the Patient Transport Service will be reviewed in 2007 in the context of introducing an equitable system throughout the Country. The Ambulance Service has a key role in relation to emergency management planning. This includes inter- agency participation with integrated emergency management, planning & training and the on-going assessment of the effectiveness and capacity of the Ambulance to respond in the event of a major emergency.

Ambulance personnel are qualified in accordance with the approved Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council standards and this includes the (2006) Emergency Medical Technician-Advanced Paramedic grade, an initiative that has enabled the development of an enhanced level of clinical care. There is also an on-going focus on maintaining clinical skills and in line with this the Ambulance Service has a dedicated full time School that provides appropriate training and education programmes.

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Related Links:

Ambulance Training College

Structure of Hospital Networks

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