1/76, Scottish Ambulance Service, Patient Transport Service (PTS).
The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) Patient Transport Service (PTS) is the non-emergency section of SAS operations. Crewed by Ambulance Care Assistants (ACA), PTS transports patients to and from outpatient clinics, day hospitals, planned discharges, non-urgent inter-hospital transfers, dialysis and more. ACA’s are advanced drivers, experts in manual handling, qualified in Basic Life Support and AED use. PTS road staff are given their taskings by the Ambulance Control Centre. Requests for PTS transport can be made directly by patients or by healthcare professionals, calling Scheduled Care Coordinators in the ACC, co-located with 999 Call Handlers & Dispatchers. As with Emergency calls, PTS requests are triaged - simply having an appointment to attend is not sufficient, there must be an appropriate need. That said, those on low incomes etc who attend outpatient appointments but do not require Ambulance transport can still reclaim their costs with the hospital cashiers office. This is in large part due to the deeply ingrained belief that access to healthcare is a right, that it should be free at the point of use, and no-one who is struggling should be out of pocket because they needed help. Likewise, NHS24 (Scotland’s Out of Hours healthcare service) has its own Patient Transport Service, completely separate to SAS PTS, using small unmarked minibuses. These are sent to collect and return patients who require face to face assessment but have no transport, also for transferring stable but urgent patients from the assessment site to Hospital. Personally I’ve had NHS24’s PTS pick me up in the middle of the night, take me to see the Doctor, take me to the OOH pharmacy to fill my prescription before taking me home again. In regards to SAS PTS, my Gran was regularly taken to and from Day Hospital by the most lovely crew. While I never worked PTS, I worked alongside them - both in the ACC and on the road. Some years ago, PTS was viewed as the only gateway to becoming an A&E Technician then Paramedic, applicants had to have both a minibus (D1) licence for PTS vehicles as well as Light Goods (C1) for the A&E fleet! When I joined as a trainee Tech I only had to have C1, that still cost me just shy of £1k for the theory test, 1.5 day crash course with a test on the second afternoon. Thank feck I passed it first time!
My SAS collection has represented PTS with only one model, I decided to add to this. Unfortunately the Ford Transit is not accurate, this is creative licensing as there are no models of the type actually used. For more mobile patients, PTS operate single crewed smaller vehicles. This has included VW Transporter minibuses, as well as cars. This now means I do have an accurate depiction of a PTS vehicle in scale model form.
1/76, Scottish Ambulance Service, Patient Transport Service (PTS).
The Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) Patient Transport Service (PTS) is the non-emergency section of SAS operations. Crewed by Ambulance Care Assistants (ACA), PTS transports patients to and from outpatient clinics, day hospitals, planned discharges, non-urgent inter-hospital transfers, dialysis and more. ACA’s are advanced drivers, experts in manual handling, qualified in Basic Life Support and AED use. PTS road staff are given their taskings by the Ambulance Control Centre. Requests for PTS transport can be made directly by patients or by healthcare professionals, calling Scheduled Care Coordinators in the ACC, co-located with 999 Call Handlers & Dispatchers. As with Emergency calls, PTS requests are triaged - simply having an appointment to attend is not sufficient, there must be an appropriate need. That said, those on low incomes etc who attend outpatient appointments but do not require Ambulance transport can still reclaim their costs with the hospital cashiers office. This is in large part due to the deeply ingrained belief that access to healthcare is a right, that it should be free at the point of use, and no-one who is struggling should be out of pocket because they needed help. Likewise, NHS24 (Scotland’s Out of Hours healthcare service) has its own Patient Transport Service, completely separate to SAS PTS, using small unmarked minibuses. These are sent to collect and return patients who require face to face assessment but have no transport, also for transferring stable but urgent patients from the assessment site to Hospital. Personally I’ve had NHS24’s PTS pick me up in the middle of the night, take me to see the Doctor, take me to the OOH pharmacy to fill my prescription before taking me home again. In regards to SAS PTS, my Gran was regularly taken to and from Day Hospital by the most lovely crew. While I never worked PTS, I worked alongside them - both in the ACC and on the road. Some years ago, PTS was viewed as the only gateway to becoming an A&E Technician then Paramedic, applicants had to have both a minibus (D1) licence for PTS vehicles as well as Light Goods (C1) for the A&E fleet! When I joined as a trainee Tech I only had to have C1, that still cost me just shy of £1k for the theory test, 1.5 day crash course with a test on the second afternoon. Thank feck I passed it first time!
My SAS collection has represented PTS with only one model, I decided to add to this. Unfortunately the Ford Transit is not accurate, this is creative licensing as there are no models of the type actually used. For more mobile patients, PTS operate single crewed smaller vehicles. This has included VW Transporter minibuses, as well as cars. This now means I do have an accurate depiction of a PTS vehicle in scale model form.