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Emergency care practitioners: a new safe effective role?

Correspondence to:
M Cooke
Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK;m.w.cooke@warwick.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The role of the emergency care practitioner (ECP) has been expanding rapidly over the past 3 years in the UK. The rationale of this development was to have prehospital practitioners, from nursing and paramedic backgrounds, who could treat and discharge patients, and avoid taking them to the emergency department. This would allow more convenient and timely care for the patient, without the need for transport to hospital for less serious conditions. The political reason for the development was to help reduce ambulance response times, by decreasing ambulance turnaround times and to reduce waits in emergency departments by decreasing attendances. The original Warwickshire pilot had their staff trained for 3 years in a graduate programme. It was then rolled out nationally, but training was reduced to 16 weeks; skills and competencies for ECPs are still being evolved by Skills for Health.¹ The focus of the role has varied . . . [Full text of this article]

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