GoodSAM update

The Trust is now reaching 5 years of the implementation of GoodSAM. The aim of GoodSAM is provide early basic life support to patients in cardiac arrest within the community.

There are several ways to register with GoodSAM – as a staff or volunteer affiliated with EEAST, as a member of another registering body such as police/St John etc, or as a member of the public with a minimum of a first aid qualification registered with GoodSAM.  We have over 15,000 registered GoodSAM cardiac arrest responders in the East of England, 1700 of these are our staff and volunteers registered with us.  

The principles of GoodSAM is crowd sourcing basic life support care for patient in cardiac arrest, therefore the responder, with no equipment, arrives by foot, to provide chest compressions (CPR), and use a community AED if there is one available and has been retrieved. This initiates the chain of survival at the earliest possible opportunity to increase a patient’s chance of survival from an out of hospital cardiac arrest.  GoodSAM responders will only be allocated to 999 calls where active CPR advice is being given to the caller.

On the arrival of an ambulance crew the clinical care and responsibility of the patients and ongoing treatment rests with the ambulance crew.  Any further care provided by the GoodSAM responder is under the supervision of the senior clinician on scene and it’s their responsibility to document and be accountable for any actions undertaken on scene.

GoodSAM responders are unable to stand down an ambulance, and routinely do not update EOC on the condition of the patient.  The response to a patient will be in line with the initial 999 call findings.  ESOP 61 provides the information regarding GoodSAM deployment for EOC staff to ensure where possible early CPR is undertaken on patients in cardiac arrest.

We know that GoodSAM responders may attend calls while they are in their employment, therefore they may be in a variety of workwear, depending where they are at time of deployment.  This should not be confused with on duty EEAST staff and should not change the skills completed by the GoodSAM responder.

To ensure that we provide the best and safest care for our patients:

All GOODSAM responders are only to be allowed to undertake basic CPR regardless of any uniform, apparel or equipment they may have in their possession or if they are in uniform and state that they work for the trust, UNLESS they can show their trust staff ID card. It is the responsibility of the clinicians on scene to check their clinical grade/ability first before allowing them to undertake alternative medical duties. (This is a result of seeing persons arriving on scene purporting to be Dr’s, Paramedics or other clinical providers without offering any verification, who have been taken on face value simply because they are in variations of a uniform of have equipment with them.)

Any GoodSAM responders arriving on scene utilising blue lights should be reported to 101 for a driving offence at the time of the incident.

Any GoodSAM responder who is acting outside of their scope of practice, or who give cause for concern in their behaviour should be Datix’d.

Published 29th July 2023