A big thank you to members who responded to our key safe campaign survey which was sent out in December last year.
Increasing numbers of people have ‘key safes’ attached to the outside of their properties. The safes have a door key inside and a pin code to open them. They are often used by frail or less mobile people to allow community support and other services to let themselves in. If no one can let our crews into a property, they need to seek police support to force access, which delays getting to a patient that might need urgent help.
A frontline member of staff suggested we run a public campaign and set up a way for people to submit their key safe code, to be stored on our systems should an ambulance crew need to get into their house. We would need to find a technical solution to allow people to safely submit their codes, and for them to be stored in an easy to access way – even if someone had no previous contact with the ambulance service. So, we wanted to test how much of a response a campaign like this might get before we go any further.
We asked our members five quick questions will help us decide what we want to do next. 129 members responded. 36 % of respondents have a key safe, 24% of respondents have a relative who has a key safe and 11 % have a friend who has a key safe. Over 50% of respondents would share their code with the ambulance service and encourage a friend to share their code with the ambulance service. Respondents gave comments on what information they would need to see before giving a key safe code to the ambulance service and shared helpful messages that they thought might convince others to share a key safe code with the ambulance service.