Responses to ‘The A&E crisis: the burgeoning effect on paramedics’

Dear Editor, Reading your comment in Journal of Paramedic Practice 5(8) I fully agree with the conclusion that ambulance services need to be recognised as a care provider and not simply as a transport service.

However, we have a long way to go when ambulance services themselves see and use their paramedics as taxi drivers with first aid skills!

My own Trust does not allow us to ring a GP. Band 6 and band 7 paramedics are doing admin work, audits, disciplinaries, are responding on the car like any other paramedic or EMT, and are generally not available for a drop of glue, a steri-strip, an IO insertion or any ‘advanced’ clinical intervention like these. We are forced to make our transport decisions on a system based on the Manchester Triage System.

A system which, according to local hospitals, does not work very well but happens to be the brainchild of the medical director. These flow charts are incredibly rigid. Even if A&E alternatives were locally available the system leaves little or no space for any autonomous decision.