PARAMEDICS from the Welsh Ambulance Service have been supporting the world-famous TT motorsport festival in the Isle of Man.

The team were led across the two-week period by Dorian James, operations manager in Powys.

Every May and June, the world’s greatest road racers gather on the Isle of Man to test themselves against the 37.73 mile ‘Mountain Course’ carved out of the island’s public roads.

The festival attracts 40,000 visitors annually, and when the Isle of Man Ambulance Service made an appeal for mutual aid, the Welsh Ambulance Service answered.

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Dorian said: “The TT is a fantastic learning experience, and you acquire so many new skills.

“For example, we learnt in our induction how to perform a surgical airway procedure and how to use a ‘Lucas-3’ device to deliver mechanical chest compressions, a piece of equipment which only high acuity paramedics in Wales are trained to use.

 

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“Our job was to attend the ‘business as usual’ activity on the island, but if you think the domestic calls would be in any way dull, you couldn’t be more wrong.

“The island’s Mountain Road has no speed limit and unfortunately, lots of race-goers and tourists had accidents here, so what we saw was predominantly trauma jobs.

“We worked really closely with the Isle of Man Ambulance Service and Great North Air Ambulance, which flew patients from the island to the UK mainland.

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Dorian has extended a thanks to the Isle of Man colleagues who hosted the visit.

He said: “We had an absolutely brilliant welcome from the Isle of Man Ambulance Service.

“From the managers to the ‘make-ready’ staff, they couldn’t do enough for us.

“We presented them with a Welsh dragon plaque at the end of the trip as a token of our appreciation.

“I’d encourage all of my WAST colleagues to think about applying next year.”