resources

Perceptions and experiences of mental health support for ambulance employees

This study was designed to meet five objectives, the first of which was to investigate work-related stressful events and how they relate to staff characteristics, such as job role and gender, and...

Applying organisational behaviour theory to aid emergency staff retention

Stemming from the works of Barnard (1938) and Follett (1941), organisational behaviour theory is characterised by its approach to the analysis of an organisation and its people on a macro scale. The...

A decision theory overview and case-based discussion

The example given in this article uses a hospital inpatient to discuss the difficulties in diagnosing those with undifferentiated pathology, but the themes relate directly to prehospital care. The...

History and experience of a volunteer ambulance first responder scheme in London

Scott Bateman, a Royal Air Force pilot, wanted to explore ways of reducing the time taken for life-saving interventions to reach a patient, having experienced the cardiac arrest of a family member. In...

Winning in winter with marginal gains: enhancing welfare on the frontline

The welfare van was a resource without an operational call sign and, as such, was a hidden asset in the context of EOC planning and resource availability. Local management were explicit that crews...

ParaVR: a virtual reality training simulator for paramedic skills maintenance

Skills development and maintenance for many paramedic emergency procedures are challenging because opportunities to learn and practise are limited. Such procedures may be required in rare and...

PTSD in paramedics: history, conceptual issues and psychometric measures

In 1994, DSM–IV replaced DSM–III, with a major change being the implementation of clinical-significance criterion to almost half of the identified mental disorders, including PTSD (Breslau and...

Could mindfulness activity improve occupational health in UK paramedics?

Evidence supporting the effectiveness of mindfulness for health professionals is broad and covers a variety of clinical domains including nursing (Kang et al, 2009; Foureur et al, 2013; Zeller and...

Taking a holistic approach to acute mental health crisis

A literature search was carried out using CINAHL, MEDLINE and PsycINFO databases, using key words: ‘ambulance’; ‘paramedic’; ‘pre hospital’; ‘emergency’ and ‘mental health’; ‘mental illness’; ‘mental...

The impact of paramedic shift work on the family system: a literature review

The present literature search was conducted between January and March 2017 using the CINAHL, British Nursing Index (BNI), Medline, NHS Evidence and PubMed databases using the University of Brighton...

Scoping ambulance emissions: recommendations for reducing engine idling time

With UK NHS ambulance trusts answering more than 10 million 999 calls in 2017, and the average ambulance vehicle travelling 50 000 miles per year (Lord Carter of Coles, 2018), several ambulance...

Advanced prehospital stroke triage in the era of mechanical thrombectomy

Representing a significantly different vision for prehospital LVO stroke identification, two research articles were published in mid-2018 that present a paradigm shift in the assessment of these...