Yorkshire emergency workers join London Olympic team

Twenty-eight staff from the Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust  have volunteered for secondments with the London Ambulance Service during the games.

Frontline clinicians and staff from emergency operations centres and support services across the region will make up the 440 NHS ambulance staff who will provide emergency assistance at Games venues and fringe events.

The Trust's volunteers head to the capital on 23 July 2012 and will spend over three weeks supporting the Games at the full range of Olympic venues including the Velodrome, Aquatics Centre and Olympic Stadium, as well as supporting fringe events taking place in Hyde Park and at other venues. Thirteen volunteers will then provide support during the Paralympic Games which begin on 29 August 2012.

The volunteers have all taken part in specialist training with London Ambulance Service to learn about their protocols, equipment and operational procedures and will go through four days of intensive training on arrival to prepare them for their stint in London. A number of the volunteers also took part in an exercise back in May to test the response of all emergency services to incidents ahead of the Games.

The volunteers are part of a pre-planned mutual aid agreement between English ambulance trusts which is helping London Ambulance Service to draft in 200 extra staff from across the country to help it cope with an anticipated increase in demand of between 4% and 5% during the Games.