Features

Prehospital assessment of stroke: time is brain

Medical advances in the last decade have seen stroke care go from ‘supportive medical therapy to that of an acute medical emergency’ (Bray et al, 2005). Acute stroke occurs when blood flow to part of...

Community resilience: what significance does it have for an ambulance service?

‘The process of withstanding the negative effects of risk exposure, demonstrating positive adjustment in the face of adversity or trauma, and beating the odds associated with risks.’.

Improving the assessment and referral of mental health patients

Scally and Donaldson (1998) advocate clinical governance to improve care and quality within the NHS. In line with this, this article will use the review, agree, implement and demonstrate (RAID)...

Listening and communication styles of undergraduate paramedic students

The listening styles profile (LSP) has been used widely as a standardized measure (Watson et al, 1995). The LSP was originally administered to young adults in the US (Watson et al, 1995). The LSP...

Determining the paediatric educational needs of prehospital providers: part 2

Our study supports prior research documenting that prehospital providers feel less comfortable providing care to children than adults and that they desire more paediatric education (Federiuk et al,...

Prehospital emergency care course: PhEC

‘The course requires an in-depth knowledge of the whole range of current paramedic practice’.

Diagnosis and management of minor head injury in the UK

To describe current NHS practice, we mailed a questionnaire to the lead clinician of all major acute hospital emergency departments in the UK and analysed routine emergency department data from...

Legislation surrounding the administration of medicines by paramedics

A formulary is a list of approved medicines. Most hospital and primary care prescribers work within an agreed formulary of medicines (which may differ between regions), and ambulance services have...

Simulation in prehospital care: teaching, testing and fidelity

There is compelling evidence to demonstrate the educational and contextual benefits of simulation in healthcare settings (Okuda, 2008; McGaghie, 2010). This is especially evident in the training of...

The effect of a heart failure training intervention assessed via clinical simulation

A two-stage repeated measures study was conducted during March and April 2008 to investigate the effect of participation in a targeted training intervention on self-reported confidence in aspects of...