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About EMICS

In this video, hear how our dedicated volunteers respond to serious 999 calls across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, and Northamptonshire. Our goal is to bring hospital-level care directly to patients when every second counts.
One mother shares her story of how EMICS gave her time to say goodbye to her daughter, Amy, after a tragic road crash. Our volunteers work to support the community, responding to thousands of calls every year.

Your donations keep us running, funding essential training and equipment. Join us in making a difference—watch our video, Donate, and Get Involved with EMICS today. Together, we can continue saving lives in the East Midlands.

What EMICS Provides

“We do this because we believe in what we do. We believe in bringing critical care to the point of illness or injury. We believe it makes a difference and that we should use our skills to serve our local community when they need us most.”

EMICS volunteer doctors are drawn from a variety of backgrounds including Anaesthesia, General Practice, Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care Medicine. Each doctor lives or works in the East Midlands and responds in their local area.

Sometimes the benefit comes from being first on the scene due to proximity to the incident. Often, the greatest benefit is the bringing forward of critical care interventions.

Using their vast experience and knowledge the doctors can work alongside NHS ambulance colleagues to deliver treatments that might otherwise be unavailable to a patient who really needs it.

EMICS volunteer doctors have all completed several years of post-graduate work in hospital, the Military or General Practice before undertaking additional training to transfer these skills to the pre-hospital environment and allow them to respond for EMICS.

Many EMICS doctors also work for regional air-ambulance services or as strategic medical advisors to the ambulance service.

Our Impact

As we cover the whole of the East Midlands, 24/7, 365 days a year, we get called to a wide variety of incidents.

These include serious road traffic accidents, cardiac arrests, assaults, paediatric emergencies, drownings, burns, falls from height, climbing accidents and so on.

We find ourselves in many different challenging scenarios as we support our colleagues from the ambulance service, air ambulance, the police, fire service and mountain rescue.

However, in some 15% to 20% of the call outs we respond to, our Clinicians are first on scene which puts extra pressure on their expertise and the equipment they carry.

Similarly, around 25% of our responses are carried out by our Clinicians using our Fast Response Vehicle. This vehicle carries extra specialist equipment, and which when crewed by the right combination of Clinician gets upgraded to a Critical Care Car.

Year	Stat
2023/24	954
2022/23	1261
2021/22	1513
2020/21	1545
2019/20	1438
2018/19	1918

View recent monthly totals →

As a result of the types of emergencies we respond to, a significant percentage of patients are subsequently transported to various hospitals throughout the East Midlands Region. Hospitals from Sheffield (in the north), Coventry (in the west), Lincoln (in the east) and Kettering (in the south) receive our patients. The majority are transported to Leicester Royal, Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham and Derby Royal. These patient movements are often supervised by an EMICS Clinician.

Without your support, our impact would not be possible.

Equipment

Each doctor is provided with an extensive range of medical equipment. To equip a fully trained volunteer doctor for EMICS costs £20,000. All donations we receive go towards this as we have no central staff costs.

Our doctors use their own cars to get to the scene, equipped with blue lights to enable them to reach emergency situations at speed. They pay for their own car insurance, including the uplift that blue lights incur, as well as funding their own fuel costs.

This picture shows all the kit our doctors carry with them to every

emergency they attend.

The uniform our doctors wear is custom made for each responder. This ensures the highest quality and safety. They come with reflective elements so they can always be seen roadside, knee pads, waterproofing and protection from the elements. Our doctors also carry an Airwaves radio for communication and a safety helmet for potentially hazardous situations.

Selection of appropriate drugs supplied by EMAS and EMICS

Life-threatening emergencies often require supplemental oxygen. Here we have a portable O2 cylinder and several options for optimal delivery.

We have recently upgraded our monitors so they are all state of the art! Have a look below for more information.

This is our main kit bag. All of the smaller specialist bags fit inside or clip to the outside meaning our doctors are prepared for whatever situation they encounter.

The most serious emergencies require ‘airway support’. One of the key skills of the EMICS doctors is the ability to sedate a patient, insert a breathing tube & take over the control of breathing. This isn’t a skill that is routinely can be offered by NHS pre-hospital resources but it can be life saving. This bag contains all the kit for various levels of airway support.

Covid precautions mean, for any high risk patient or aerosol generating procedure, our doctors wear level 3 PPE to protect themselves.

For stabilisation of fractured limbs.

This little bag contains everything needed to control life-threatening haemorrhage, including tourniquets and haemostatic dressings.

Some of the most serious injuries require emergency surgical interventions such as Resuscitative Thoracotomy, opening a patient’s chest to access their heart directly, or Emergency Amputation. Thankfully these procedures are very rare, but our doctors are trained and prepared to do them if necessary.

Occasionally our doctors are called to obstetric emergencies. This pack contains everything needed for an emergency delivery or, very rarely, an emergency surgical delivery.

This bag contains kit to deal with serious burns, both thermal and chemical.

For emergency volume resuscitation or hydration.

For emergency IV or IO access to administer vital fluids and medications.

All of our doctors are trained for paediatric emergencies too. This kit contains various paeds-specific equipment in sizes ranging from newborn to teenager.

Fast Response Vehicle (FRV) and Equipment

Over the last three years we have been trialling the use of a Fast Response Vehicle to run in parallel with our traditional responding model of clinicians using their own cars. This vehicle is a centralised resource for responders to work on a pre-booked shift basis, which gives EMAS a greater level of certainty over the support EMICS provides.

This FRV carries an enhanced level of equipment in addition to all the other equipment (including a Schiller Monitor) and consumables carried by the Doctors individually.

This additional Equipment includes:

A Hamilton Ventilator so that a patient’s breathing can be taken over,
A Lucas device which performs external cardiac compressions ,and
An Ultrasound Scanner, which provides out of hospital diagnostic scans that can be transmitted to the destination hospital ahead of a patient’s arrival, in the same way as a Schiller Monitor.

This additional equipment was funded by a grant from NHS Together, the NHS’s charity, which also funded the servicing of these machines for two additional years.

When crewed by the right combination of Doctors, this FRV can be upgraded to a Critical Care Car and thereby deliver specialist care of the highest category.

Monitor

We recently invested a great deal of time and money sourcing the most comprehensive, up-to-date monitors for our volunteer doctors.

The Schiller DEFIGARD Touch 7 is extremely compact and offers the latest defibrillation technology in combination with comprehensive monitoring functions. This means that it is easily portable to the scene of emergencies and offers the most up-to-date clinical tools. This monitor works wirelessly to download patient data to a secure server so that we can analyse and learn from incidents we attend.

Despite huge support from Schiller these monitors are expensive, but we believe worth it. Each monitor costs £15,000. If you would like to contribute towards the cost, or help fund one of these for an EMICS doctor, please get in touch via the contact us page.

Clinical Governance and Policies

Discover our commitment to clinical excellence and patient safety. Learn more about our robust Clinical Governance and Policies

Our History

1980

The Early Years

In 1980, before the advent of mobile phones, digital technology and paramedics, Dr Tim Gray joined the medical practice in the market town of Oakham in rural Rutland (the smallest county in the UK). Expanding the ethos of the practice by treating their patients in the community and in the local Cottage Hospital, Dr Gray made himself available on a voluntary basis to the Ambulance Service.

1980

1984

Rutland Scheme

By 1984 several of his GP colleagues in the area had joined him and The Rutland Accident Care Scheme (RACS) was launched. This was a charity providing doctors to work alongside the Ambulance Service treating seriously ill and injured patients both at the scene and en-route to hospital.

1984

2004

EMAS and EMICS

In 2004 the county Ambulance Services came together to form The East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EMAS). Also at that time RACS amalgamated with Ilkeston BASICS, a similar scheme in Derbyshire run by Dr Andrew Davies. The new scheme which covered the whole of the East Midlands, was renamed as The East Midlands Immediate Care Scheme (EMICS).

2004

2024

Today

The scheme continues as a Charity using donations to purchase and maintain vital emergency medical equipment, train new clinicians and run the organisation in order to work alongside our paramedic colleagues and other emergency services treating seriously ill and injured patients.

2024

Our Partners

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Peak Net Web Design

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Schiller

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dotwall Web Design

LCC Communities Fund

Lands' End

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Charities Aid Foundation

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SMS Smart Metering

Gates Garden Centre

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Rescue & Medical

MCAVA Council Secretary

MCAVA

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ATS Euromaster

foyle

Foyle Foundation