A CHARITY working to reduce the number of motorcyclists involved in road traffic collisions has been given a £30,000 funding boost.

DocBike has received the grant from Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance in order to fund life saving medical equipment.

The charity operates in partnership with the air ambulance services as one of a number of injury prevention collaborations. They work to engage with motorcyclists to prevent people from “becoming patients in the first place” whilst also working alongside emergency services in providing critical roadside care.

The £30,000 will be used two state of the art critical care monitors from Zoll Medicare which will enable DocBike volunteers to manage a range of complex needs for patients.

Dr Ian Mew, co-founder and Trustee of DocBike, said: “The Zoll monitors are essentially the best piece of critical care monitoring equipment that we can find to treat patients that are severely injured or ill, or who are suffering during or post cardiac arrest. The capability of one device to do everything robustly and reliably is phenomenal."

“This is why DSAA and the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASfT) use the Zoll monitors and why DocBike were keen to use the same monitoring system, such that not only are we ensuring that patients receive the best level of care, but also ensuring a seamless transition of that care between all parties at incidents, which will help to save time and save people’s lives.

“We are immensely grateful to DSAA for this grant which will be hugely beneficial to the charity and the patients that we help.”

Bill Sivewright, Chief Executive Officer of Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance, said: “The rationale behind awarding this grant is very straightforward because in order to do what we do, we have set out a stall of collaborating with other organisations.

“One of these key collaborations has been with DocBike because it lies at the very centre of our injury prevention agenda, where we are trying to help people to avoid being in a road traffic collision and becoming patients in the first place.”