BEEP doctors has been awarded £1,000 from Cumbria Health on Call.
Cumbria Health on Call is a social enterprise and established the Social Enterprise Awards Fund in 2016, to support its staff who wanted to be involved in charity events for local causes.
Team member Sarah Taylor-Howe applied to the fund after seeing the recent BEEP Doctors funding campaign.
The BEEP service has been established in Cumbria since 1994 and offers skilled emergency doctors to help at the scenes of accident.
The 16 doctors are all unpaid and are on call 24/7 – even during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many of them have been working in hospitals and the local community.
They provide enhanced medical interventions which are not normally able to be provided by paramedics at the roadside, stabilising critically ill or injured patients long before they reach hospital.
Sarah said: “The charity is a long-standing local Cumbrian charity, with very similar values to Cumbria Health on Call.
“The doctors are unpaid local GPs and A&E consultants working to support other partner services.
“I have only ever heard positive feedback about the service they provide, and their quick arrival at scenes have saved many lives.”
Dr Theo Weston is the founder of the BEEP Doctors and states that this is a vital service for this area in addition to the excellent care provided by paramedics but which provides quicker on scene medical stability to critically ill or injured patients by the provision of enhanced medical care when it can take a long time to reach hospital in such a rural area.
“We are very grateful indeed for this very generous donation because without this and other donations from members of the public we would be unable to operate.
“The BEEP charity have kicked off 2021 with a new campaign to drive their fundraising forward and look to raise £145,000 for new lifesaving monitors to equip all our volunteer doctors and give more patients the chance of survival.”