Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Ems Lo Oldy
Ems Lo Oldy
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Franco-German model
Anglo-American model
No. of patients
Provider of care
Main motive
Destination
for transported
patients
Overarching
organization
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which might lead to the loss of skills of personnel and less exposure
to emergency events.25 The superiority of ALS over BLS has not
been demonstrated and the World Health Organization warn
about the trap of glamorous ALS skills appearing better than the
simple BLS that a variety of people might benefit from.3 Thus, it is
essential to determine the strengths and weaknesses of both levels of
care and utilize the one that suits the local context most.
A new model of EMS delivery that has attracted attention
recently is the Emergency Care Practitioner Scheme in the United
Kingdom (UK). The UK, National Health Service has developed
an Emergency Care Practitioner (ECP) scheme in a reaction to a
change in primary health care provision in order to increase the
percentage of patients treated in a community setting or at the
scene of an incident.34 In the UK, 50% of patients transported
by ambulance to emergency departments are discharged without
any significant treatment or referral.35 Thus, the ECP scheme
aims to reduce unnecessary ambulance transport to Emergency
Departments.
The NHS defines an Emergency Care Practitioner as an allied
healthcare professional who works to a medical model, with the
attitude, skills, and knowledge base to deliver holistic care and
treatment in the pre-hospital, primary care, and general practice
environments, with a broadly defined level of autonomy.36 The
scheme is designed to enhance and upgrade the skills of existing
paramedics so that assessment and, where possible, treatment, can
be provided in the community without transporting the patient to
hospitals.
The scheme allows Emergency Care Practitioners to make
autonomous clinical decisions within their scope of practice based
on the concept of chain of survival,37 and allows paramedics to
develop their careers outside the ambulance service in primary
health care clinics and minor injury clinics.34 The concept of the
chain of survival has been developed from decades of research into
out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The survival from cardiac arrest is
enhanced by performing a step wise sequence that has been shown
to be effective in reducing mortality and improving survival. (Fig. 1)
This sequence includes: 1) early recognitions of signs, 2)
prompt activation of emergency medical system, 3) prompt basic
CPR, 4) defibrillation, 5) intubation, and 6) administration of
medications. These chains have to be linked together and weakness
in one chain will compromise the whole process. It is meant to act
as a bridge between pre-hospital care and primary health care to
achieve seamless, continuous and smooth transition of patient care.
The scheme was first trialed in 2004 and continues to expand. The
schemes effectiveness is yet to be fully evaluated but the preliminary
results are encouraging.
EARLY
ACCESS
EARLY
CPR
322
EARLY
EARLY
DEFIBRILLATION ADVANCE CARE
Acknowledgements
The author reported no conflict of interest and no funding was
received on this work.
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