Study objective

We aimed to investigate community first responders’ contribution to emergency care provision in terms of number, rate, type, and location of calls and characteristics of patients attended.

Methods

We used a retrospective observational design analyzing routine data from electronic clinical records from 6 of 10 ambulance services in the United Kingdom during 2019. Descriptive statistics, including numbers and frequencies, were used to illustrate characteristics of incidents and patients that the community first responders attended first in both rural and urban areas.

Results

The data included 4.5 million incidents during 1 year. The community first responders first attended a higher proportion of calls in rural areas compared with those in urban areas (3.90% versus 1.48 %). In rural areas, the community first responders also first attended a higher percentage of the most urgent call categories, 1 and 2. The community first responders first attended more than 9% of the total number of category 1 calls and almost 5% of category 2 calls. The community first responders also attended a higher percentage of the total number of cardiorespiratory and neurological/endocrine conditions. They first attended 6.5% of the total number of neurological/endocrine conditions and 5.9% of the total number of cardiorespiratory conditions. Regarding arrival times in rural areas, the community first responders attended higher percentages (more than 6%) of the total number of calls that had arrival times of less than 7 minutes or more than 60 minutes.

Conclusion

In the United Kingdom, community first responders contribute to the delivery of emergency medical services, particularly in rural areas and especially for more urgent calls. The work of community first responders has expanded from their original purpose—to attend to out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The future development of community first responders’ schemes should prioritize training for a range of conditions, and further research is needed to explore the contribution and potential future role of the community first responders from the perspective of service users, community first responders’ schemes, ambulance services, and commissioners.

中文翻译：

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社区急救人员对英国紧急医疗服务提供的贡献

学习目标

我们的目的是调查社区急救人员在呼叫的数量、比率、类型和位置以及就诊患者的特征方面对紧急护理提供的贡献。

方法

我们使用回顾性观察设计分析了2019 年英国 10 项救护车服务中的 6 项电子临床记录的常规数据。描述性统计数据（包括数量和频率）用于说明社区急救人员最先处理的事件和患者的特征在农村和城市地区。

结果

数据包括 1 年内发生的 450 万起事件。与城市地区相比，农村地区的社区急救人员首先接听电话的比例更高（3.90% 对 1.48%）。在农村地区，社区急救人员也首先接听了较高比例的最紧急呼叫类别 1 和 2。社区急救人员首先接听了 1 类呼叫总数的 9% 以上和 2 类呼叫总数的近 5%电话。社区急救人员也参加了较高比例的心肺和神经/内分泌疾病总数。他们首先参加了神经/内分泌疾病总数的 6.5% 和心肺疾病总数的 5.9%。关于农村地区的到达时间，

结论

在英国，社区急救人员为提供紧急医疗服务做出贡献，特别是在农村地区，尤其是对于更紧急的呼叫。社区急救人员的工作已经从最初的目的扩展到处理院外心脏骤停。社区急救员计划的未来发展应优先针对一系列条件进行培训，需要进一步研究从服务用户、社区急救员计划、救护车的角度探索社区急救员的贡献和未来可能的作用服务和专员。