Life can change in a second for our patients, however, it can also present an unexpected and often challenging situation for those people who provide help to the patient before professional support, such as Devon Air Ambulance, arrives.

Our Patient Support team provides support to patients and their relatives following our attendance, however, we also offer support to the so-called Good Samaritans who are not directly connected to the patient but who stop and provide either first aid, practical intervention or even psychological support / comfort to a patient or their family/friends before the emergency services arrive.

If you have been a Good Samaritan at an incident Devon Air Ambulance attended, we would like to say ‘Thank You’, as we know from experience just how important our patients find such support.

However, we understand the potential long-lasting effects on you of providing that support and while we as a team are able to discuss/debrief as a crew after the event, you may well only have the option to go home and reflect on your actions alone.

While we are unable to provide you with any patient-specific details, due our obligation to maintain the confidentiality of our patients, we can offer support to you, talk through what happened, discuss how your actions will have helped and assisted the patient.

So, if you find yourself having questions about your actions, the help you provided, or the things you witnessed that are bothering you, then please do get in touch with us. Alongside the support we can provide, we can also signpost you to other resources where you can find out more about the type of incident you provided help at, or put you in touch with other agencies who can provide further and more specialist support.

As well as helping you with you finding closure from the incident, we hope we will be able to encourage and enable you to provide similar help to a patient should there be a ‘next time’.