When sudden illness strikes, or a serious accident occurs, the minutes that follow before a patient is admitted to hospital can be crucial to their survival.
In more remote areas of Scotland, the emergency services may not be able to access an incident as quickly as an urban area, and this is where charity The Sandpiper Trust comes in.
A decade ago, The Sandpiper Trust was set up in memory of 14-year-old Scot Sandy Dickson by his parents, family and friends. The youngster, who was a strong swimmer and keen sportsman, died in a tragic drowning accident at a remote lake while visiting his grandmother in Canada.
A lover of the great outdoors, Sandy was brought up by the River Teith near Doune. He played rugby, loved horse-riding and had everything to live for. His family was left devastated by their loss and his aunt, Claire Maitland, is one of the charity’s founders along with his mother Penny and father Aly.
“There was absolutely no reason for Sandy to drown,” Claire said, “When accidents like that happen, and you get that middle-of-the-night phone call, your life is turned upside down. A tragedy like that can really shake up a family.”
Claire had already been involved in volunteering with NHS Grampian and, after Sandy’s death, she began to wonder what would happen if an accident similar to his happened somewhere rural like Glenesk or Ballater who would be the first on the scene and how long would it take an ambulance to get there?We have 10 copies of The Swallow, The Owl and The Sandpiper to give away. To have a chance of obtaining a copy, send an email to features@thecourier.co.uk containing the word “SANDPIPER” in the subject line. Please include your full name, address and a daytime telephone number in the body of the email. The offer closes at 5pm on May 6 and 10 entries will be chosen at random thereafter.”In a situation like this, every second counts, so I called different organisations and, through my own GP, was given the contact number of Dr Colville Laird in Auchterarder who, at that time, was introducing basic training courses for GPs in Scotland in pre-hospital care. When we met, we were singing from the same hymn sheet and I asked if he would have a need for pre-hospital emergency equipment if I could raise enough money to buy it. As it turned out, he had started training GPs in pre-hospital care, but didn’t have any equipment so it just fitted perfectly.”
Five months after her son’s death, Penny called up Claire worried because she didn’t know what to do with the rest of her life and that’s when The Sandpiper Trust was born.
Established in 2001, the trust’s aim is to provide doctors, nurses and paramedics who have been highly trained in pre-hospital Emergency care by The British Association of Immediate Care Scotland (BASICS Scotland) with appropriate emergency medical equipment known as the Sandpiper Bag.
Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, the charity can count the many lives it has helped to save, having distributed 800 bags around Scotland along with over 80 vehicle locators, which are linked to Emergency Services Control Centres in Inverness, Edinburgh and Cardonald.
Claire said they thought long and hard about the charity’s name. “We finally came across the bird the sandpiper, which plays about on river banks and in the water just like Sandy did. The word also contains part of his name, and ‘piper’ makes you think of Scotland.”
She went on to say that many GPs have told her it is the worst feeling to be a doctor and not be in a position to help someone in need. “Up until The Sandpiper Trust came along, if GPs travelled on roads and came across an accident, they wouldn’t have the training skills or equipment to go in and help. The reason we allocate per doctor and not per surgery is because it’s the doctor’s own bag that way, it can be carried in a personal car.”
One owner of a Sandpiper Bag came across a car crash with a mother and three children and was able to tend all with the equipment.
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Meanwhile, Dr Colville Laird, who is medical adviser to the trust, has used his bag on several occasions. In one incident, he treated a patient who had been thrown from a horse and sustained significant injuries including a collapsed lung. Dr Laird was able to stabilise the patient sufficiently to survive a journey to hospital. He was a young married man with children.
The charity is a small operation, as Claire puts it, “run from the kitchen tables of both myself and my sister and brother-in-law” and there are no overheads.
“We pay nobody. It’s straight volunteering and every penny goes to The Sandpiper Trust. We struggle along ourselves I think this gives us a bit of character,” she said.
The trust’s fund-raising efforts have ranged from a rugby shirt day, when 7500 people mainly children wore their rugby shirts, to the creation of a cook book. Former rugby union international Gavin Hastings has been patron of the charity since its inception.
At the end of 2009, the trust published a collection of words of comfort and wisdom entitled “The Swallow, The Owl and The Sandpiper”. The book, compiled by Claire, was spurred by correspondence with HM The Queen.
“When tragedy strikes, or an accident happens, it is so often difficult to know the right thing to say. What you say today could be wrong to a person tomorrow, because moods can be up and down. I’ve always wanted to find a book, because the written word is often a better healer than the spoken word,” Claire explained.
“The Queen very generously presented the 700th Sandpiper bag to Dr Ewen McLeod of Ballater, and she was very interested in everything we did.
“Afterwards, I wrote to thank her and I’d had this idea that I wanted words of encouragement, so I asked if she had any she might be able to share. Four days later, she sent me her favourite verse, which is now at the front of the book.”
Claire says the charity has had a lot of interest from England, Wales and Ireland as well as places like New Zealand and Canada, but coping with requests for equipment in Scotland is already a huge task for the small operation. It’s also important to the trust that whoever is using the equipment has been properly trained in pre-hospital care by BASICS Scotland, as they can rest assured the bags are in good hands.
Looking to the future, The Sandpiper Trust’s work will never be done when it comes to the bags and they will continue to have a close relationship with the emergency and rescue services. “Once you’ve given out that many bags, people ask if we are nearly there, but the answer is probably not, because we are constantly updating the equipment inside.”