New St John Ambulance hub opens for business
Friday, 03 March, 2023
Following a huge refurbishment, St John has proudly opened its brand-new ambulance hub in Leicestershire.
The impressive 18,000 square feet site brings different specialisms together in one place to support the delivery of all ambulance activity within St John, as well as the four services that make up the Midlands Critical Care Transfer Services (MCCTS), who will operate from the St John site.
The central location of the hub between East Midlands hospitals will allow St John to work closely with MCCTS, including the CenTre neonatal transfer service, the CoMET paediatric transfer service, ECMO (Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation) service and ACCOTS adult transfer services.
The site is well positioned between Leicester, Nottingham and Derby hospital sites, is close to the airport for repatriations, and close to the motorway for a timely response to transfer requests.
Martin Houghton-Brown, chief executive at St John Ambulance, said: "Our expertise in critical care transfers has been a long-held secret, but we are increasingly being asked to do this important work for the NHS.
"This brand-new hub in the East Midlands marks another big step towards making the most of our valuable partnerships."
Collaborating with these services will allow St John to share its knowledge, build strong working relationships, and most importantly deliver excellent critical care services for patients.
There are greater opportunities for better integration and communication between the two teams, who are able to mix with each other right from the early part of their shift.
Luke Stevenson, district youth lead for Leicestershire and Rutland at St John Ambulance, said: "My role is primarily with our young people, so having them in a facility where there are ambulances coming in and out, where they can look around our fleet and speak to our specialist emergency ambulance crews and see the wider St John - it is absolutely fantastic.
"As well as being a modern building that we know is safe, that is well heated, secure and looked after, it's a perfect opportunity for our volunteers to also support our work.
"Just looking at my own role, I know a lot of young people want to get out and work on ambulances when they turn 18, so seeing what's available to them and seeing the work that St John Ambulance does, a lot of them I hope will go on to actually work in here or certainly volunteer out of here when they turn 18.
"It's about giving them that goal to aspire to - if they can't see it, they won't want to reach it, so that's really invaluable."
Moving critically unwell patients to make sure they get the very best possible care feels like the very definition of what St John does - providing lifesaving support to the most vulnerable.
Dan Bevis, head of ambulance operations at St John Ambulance, said: "The opening of a site in Castle Donington will bring together the expertise of both St John and the NHS to work closely to deliver the very best patient care.
"The work that Critical Care Transfer Services undertake is simply breath-taking, delivering the very best patient care to those who need it most.
"We're extremely proud to add to our estate and continue with our recent string of 'Good' ratings from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for our services in ambulance care across England.
"We're also really pleased that with the addition of this hub, we'll be able to open an Ambulance Deployment Hub for Leicestershire too which will enable us to deliver Event Ambulance activity, support to NHS Ambulance Services such as EMAS as well as ambulance support to Community Response Operations too."
