History
In 1996 SWIFT began
It was then known as South Wiltshire Intervention for Trauma started by Malcolm Russell a military doctor who’s aim was to foster links between civilian & military immediate care in South Wiltshire. Here due to the Army presence there was the potential for civilian doctors to be called to military incidents but more importantly there were a number of well trained & committed military doctors regularly posted to the area. Malcolm & his colleague David Sutcliffe began Wiltshire’s Immediate Care Scheme.
In 1999 Dr Neil Meardon met Malcolm. Both were full of enthusiasm & Neil subsequently became the scheme’s chairman for the following 10 years. Some lean & some plentiful years as far as both staff and funding went. Through Neil’s dedication & ability to fit 20 years work into the 10 years he held the chairmanship Neil brought the organisation out of the noughties very much fit for the purpose of modern Immediate Care with links, training & communications to carry it through the next decade.
In 2009 there came an opportunity to grow & gain status as a registered charity with the charities commission. This obviously required more work than one doctor could do and Drs Adam Brownhill & Jonathan Glover took over as joint chairmen. South Wiltshire Intervention for Trauma had for some years been offering a county-wide response including Swindon & the M4 corridor in Wiltshire. 2 Members were called to London at the time of the bombings in 2005 and there were more members who were formally trained in the medical management of major incidents and mass gatherings such as the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge. It was therefore decided to change the organisation name to SWIFT Medics retaining the original initials & familiarity but relinquishing the ties to South Wiltshire alone.
SWIFT Medics.
This takes us to the present time we have 10 active immediate care doctors, together with paramedics & nurses with immediate care interests as members. There is great liaison with the Great Western Ambulance Service and the Wiltshire Air Ambulance together with training links with Safe Drive Stay Alive, The Wiltshire Police Driver Training Unit but much more work to be done to grow the organisation.
Our main aim for the future is to ensure that the provision of excellent immediate care to people in Wiltshire is not left to chance and the luck of having trained staff nearby but to offer a service which though still voluntary is more consistent in both availability and standard of training.
To achieve this takes efficient use of the time and money available and to a certain extent a business like and media-savy approach. We aim is to raise public awareness of SWIFT Medics’ existence and role and to continue to forge links with organisations such as the Road Safety Partnership & other statutory bodies.
We have a flexible 5 year business plan which will not only make best use of whatever funding becomes available but also put the organisation in a place where we can source funding from statutory bodies as well as traditional small and large scale voluntary sector fund raising mechanisms and even tap that hitherto difficult goal of recurrent funding from health & central government. This plan is outlined later in this presentation.
