Sponsored Editorial

Patients are at the heart of everything Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (KSS) does with expert medical teams saving lives when every second counts.

In 2023, KSS was needed more than ever before and responded to over 3,000 incidents.

However, the care the charity provides doesn’t stop once a patient has been safely handed over to a hospital team for ongoing care.

As part of the charity’s commitment to ensuring the best possible outcomes for patients and their families, KSS introduced a new service two years ago called Patient and Family Aftercare.

It’s just one aspect of the charity’s work that will benefit from the current urgent fundraising appeal, ‘Buy it for Life’, which aims to raise the final £1million needed to purchase its life-saving helicopter.

The money saved from owning, rather than leasing, this aircraft will enable it to press ahead with future developments of the service, including the patient and family aftercare service.

This service aims to ensure the best possible recovery journey for KSS patients and their families by providing ongoing tailored support. This can range from answering questions about their care by phone or email to speaking with the crew members who were involved in their treatment.

During its 35-year history, KSS has seen many times how important it can be for former patients to connect with the doctors, paramedics, pilots and dispatchers who saved their lives and co-ordinated their care, as well as the incredible wider team of people who make the service possible.

Importantly, the service is also available to help bereaved families. For these people, establishing and maintaining a relationship with KSS can be of support as they grieve.

Sarita Taneja from Sheerness is the KSS Patient and Family Aftercare Manager and has been responsible for managing relationships with former patients since 2018.

Her fantastic work was rewarded in 20222 when she was named Charity Staff Member of the Year at the Air Ambulances UK Awards of Excellence.

The award was given to Sarita for her outstanding contribution to KSS and continually demonstrating high professional standards of performance and achievement.

“It’s a huge privilege to do what we do,” said Sarita.

“Initially our focus was on arranging patient and family visits to help patients understand what happened to them and what care we provided. Now we are working on supporting their recovery journeys in the months and years that follow their incident.

“We are developing a bespoke service that meets the specific needs of individual patients and families and what is right for them.”

If you are a former patient of KSS or the family of a former KSS patient and you would like to find out more about how the Patient and Family Aftercare Team could help you, please contact patients@aakss.org.uk citing that you would like to speak to the team.

To support the charity’s current urgent appeal to raise the final £1million needed to purchase its helicopter please, visit the Buy it for Life page on the charity’s website.