Maidenhead Community Responders went live in mid-November 2005. At the moment cover is limited to office hours, evenings and the weekend - all during waking hours. The target is 24x7 coverage, but for that we need more team members - especially those that are willing to get up in the middle of the night!

During the weeks that we manage a decent number of hours, we have been averaging about 2 calls per week. The most calls that we have attended in one day is four.

Subject to approval, we may provide a more detailed analysis, but patient confidentiality is a priority and the amount of information provided will not compromise that.

In the meantime, we have been called to the following conditions (in no particular order)

• Cardiac Arrests
• Fits
• Strokes
• Choking
• Chest pains
• Stomach pains
• Faints and Collapses
• Bleeding
• Fractures
• Dislocations
• Asthma attacks
• Diabetic emergencies
• Hyperventilations
• Drugs overdoses

As of now, our best response time (from receiving the call to arriving on-scene) is 2 minutes. We have arrived on scene before the ambulance in half of the call-outs (bear in mind that we have to obey all Traffic Regulations), our defibrillator has been deployed twice and we have been involved with two successful resuscitations ('successful' being interpreted here as restoring spontaneous cardiac output.when there was none. The patient may not necessarily have survived for much longer, but at least we gave them a while longer to say their goodbyes).

In addition there are a number of people alive today whose heart was successfully restarted by another Berkshire Community Responder operating a defibrillator.