Wiltshire Air Ambulance hopes to raise £10k during the Big Give Christmas Challenge to pay for Critical Care skills training for two new paramedics who join its team in 2015.

And you can have your donation matched in the first three days of the challenge – December 4, 5 and 6 – starting at 10am. 

It is the first time that WAA is taking part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge and members of the public have a key role to play in making online donations and help the charity reach its Big Give target.

Critical Care skills enable paramedics to administer additional drugs for pain relief and to treat conditions such as cardiac arrest and septicaemia. The paramedics can also carry out enhanced practical skills to deal with serious head, chest or airway injuries.

The air ambulance's six paramedics on WAA all have Critical Care skills, with the training paid for by WAA. The training costs £5,000 per paramedic.

Richard Miller, WAA paramedic, said: “The additional skills that we have are beneficial to patients and really make a difference.

"It’s brilliant that we can change a patient’s outcome with these skills. Critical care is not just about additional drugs and procedures that you acquire, it is also about additional learning and the experience that you may bring to a particular tasking.”

Joanne Munday, WAA paramedic, said: “We deal with some patients whose injury or condition is immediately life threatening, so some of the drugs and procedures we use are necessary to get the patient to hospital alive.

"The additional Critical Care skills are diverse and range from advance analgesia to surgical techniques. We provide them regularly, on about 80 per cent of incidents that we attend.”

David Philpott, WAA’s Chief Executive, said: “As a charity our duty is to ensure that we get the best possible care to our patients, so once the Critical Care Paramedic course had proved its worth elsewhere we saw it as our responsibility to bring these enhanced skills to Wiltshire.”

The Big Give Christmas Challenge works by members of the public making donations online. WAA has a total of £4,000 pledged, half from The Andrew Smiley Charitable Trust and half from its Big Give Charity Champion (Candis Club), but to secure this funding WAA has to achieve matched funding of £4,000 in online donations from members of the public, plus another £2,000 to meet its overall target of £10,000.

A proportion of the Charity Champion’s funding will be released on the first three days of the Challenge – 40% on Thursday, December 4, 30% on Friday, December 5, and 30% on Saturday, December 6, starting at 10am.

Donations can continue to be made after the Charity Champion’s funding has been released until WAA has reached its target or until 5pm on Wednesday, December 17.

Rebecca de la Bedoyere, WAA’s fundraising manager, said: “The Big Give Christmas Challenge is a brilliant way for people who value our work to make their donation go even further.

"By donating online from 10am on December 4, 5 and 6, every pound donated could be doubled and every penny will pay for enhanced training for our paramedics that could make the difference between life and death.

"We hope people in Wiltshire will get involved and support this fantastic initiative.”

To find out more about The Big Christmas Challenge including making a donation go to new.thebiggive.org.uk/project/WAA or go to www.wiltshireairambulance.co.uk where there will be a link.