It can be revealed that rockstar guitarist with The Coronas, Lar Kaye, was ferried to hospital in the back of a Garda patrol car as there was no ambulance available to respond after he collapsed at the band\u2019s concert at King John\u2019s Castle, in Limerick, last month.<\/p>\n
Kaye was attended to by an off-duty paramedic and an off-duty nurse, who were both separately attending the concert as punters, it has also emerged.<\/p>\n
Efforts by the off-duty first responders were successful in maintaining the guitarist\u2019s airway after he collapsed during the opening of the much-anticipated stage show on May 29th, which was to kickstart the city\u2019s Bank Holiday Weekend festivities.<\/p>\n
The band are due to replay the concert on July 11th.<\/p>\n
When asked for comment, the HSE National Ambulance Service (NAS) said it \u201cregrets that any service user should have a negative experience\u201d but that it \u201ccannot discuss individual case details\u201d.<\/p>\n
NAS also said that \u201cduring particularly busy periods, such as over bank holiday weekends, lower-acuity calls may wait longer for an ambulance\u201d.<\/p>\n
When contacted for comment, the concert promoter, Mick Dolan, said Dolans also had their own first responders and medics in place at the gig.<\/p>\n
However, the incident involving Kaye\u2019s collapse at a concert attended by thousands has brought to the fore the availability of ambulances in the Limerick region, particularly during bank holiday weekends.<\/p>\n
When Kaye collapsed after suffering a suspected seizure, no ambulance was available due to the number of calls logged in the NAS emergency response system at the time.<\/p>\n
About an hour and 20 minutes after Kaye\u2019s frightening on-stage collapse, and still with no ambulance available, the musician was transferred from the concert venue in a Garda car to University Hospital Limerick, accompanied by the off-duty paramedic who had earlier leapt from the crowd to help.<\/p>\n
Sources said the 999\/112 call volume \u201cfar outweighs\u201d the number of ambulances that are on duty, and that, on any given night in Limerick City, there is a maximum of \u201cthree ambulances\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLimerick has a population of 140,000, you add in students, holiday makers, and Limerick paramedics are covering north Tipperary, north Cork, there is a catchment area of 450,000 people,\u201d one source said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt night time, there are between 11 and 13 ambulances, maximum, on in that region. There are nine stations in the region, everybody has one ambulance, Limerick has three.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt depends on the call volume at the time, and the nature of the call, generally you will get the closest available ambulance, but that available ambulance might be diverted to something more serious depending on what comes in.\u201d<\/p>\n
All 999\/112 ambulance alerts in the Limerick region and beyond are processed out of Ballyshannon, County Donegal.<\/p>\n
NAS said it \u201cworks to deliver the highest standard of care for people using NAS services. NAS operates a nationally integrated deployment model (that) dispatches the nearest available ambulance to the most urgent calls, regardless of county boundaries,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll 999\/112 calls received for emergency medical assistance are prioritised using an internationally recognised system that triages calls based on clinical priority, which range from life-threatening cardiac or respiratory arrest to minor illness or injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe National Emergency Operations Centre is the command and coordination hub of the NAS. It is staffed by emergency medical controllers, emergency dispatchers, clinical nurse managers, control supervisors, and control managers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reliable sources within the ambulance service said paramedics are \u201crun ragged\u201d trying to keep up with calls due to inadequate numbers of ambulance crews on the road.<\/p>\n
It comes against a backdrop of unrest within the NAS over pay and conditions.<\/p>\n
On May 11th, SIPTU and UNITE members working as emergency medical technicians, paramedics, advanced paramedics, specialist paramedics, and paramedic supervisors initiated a work-to-rule and engaged in a 24-hour work stoppage on May 12th over the HSE\u2019s failure to implement the recommendations of an independent report of updating ambulance workers\u2019 pay scales to reflect changes in their responsibilities and workloads over the past two decades.<\/p>\n
A further 72-hour strike action for May 26th last was stood down on May 22 following constructive discussions with the HSE at the Labour Court.<\/p>\n
The HSE said previous proposals to resolve the dispute were rejected by the unions. However, the unions said the previous proposals came with conditions that were unacceptable to their members.<\/p>\n
Email enquiries followed up with phone-calls to The Coronas, through their booking company, AMA Music Agency, went unanswered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It can be revealed that rockstar guitarist with The Coronas, Lar Kaye, was ferried to hospital in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-517696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}