UK Fire & Ambulance Workers Needed for Obese Patient Rescue Insights

Seeking real experiences from UK Fire/Ambulance service workers dealing with obese patient rescue & transport Hi all! I’m working on a piece looking at the practical and human challenges faced by frontline responders when dealing with patients with obesity in rescue and transport situations. I’m particularly interested in hearing from UK Fire Service or Ambulance Service personnel (or similar roles) who’ve dealt with this and are comfortable sharing their experiences. For transparency: these insights may be shared with journalists to help inform reporting on patient transport and rescues. This is not an academic study, and any comments can be anonymised. Some of the things I’d love to hear about (feel free to answer any that apply): \* Lifting / extraction challenges — have you or colleagues been injured when trying to move or lift a patient due to weight/size? \* Delays or longer rescue times — does safely moving and transporting larger patients take significantly more time and resources? \* Impact on colleagues — have staff needed treatment or time off due to musculoskeletal strain or injuries during these jobs? \* Service impact — do these cases affect overall service efficiency, response times, resource availability, etc? \* Patient risks — in your experience, does the added complexity affect the speed of transport in a way that could impact patient outcomes? and anything else relevant you’ve noticed in this area. I’m aiming to highlight the real-world operational and welfare issues (for both patients and responders), so any honest insight from your work is truly appreciated. Thank you!