Ambulance services, paramedics and pre-hospital medicine

Alongside their traditional workload of responding to life-threatening emergencies such as heart attacks, strokes and major trauma, they work in the broad and complex field of unplanned primary care, including social and mental-health related calls.  A large variety of calls paramedics respond to do not require onward transportation to hospitals or other clinical settings.

Therefore, while the paramedic role is becoming increasingly autonomous, clinically versatile and socially valued it is also more challenging than ever before. 

How to meet the challenges of emergency services is a big challenge for the NHS. In particular, how should emergency services be managed and what is the strategy for pre-hospital medicine? What skills and capabilities are needed and how can workforce morale be maintained?

The research

Professor Leo McCann has conducted extensive qualitative research into the organisation of NHS ambulance services in England. He has worked closely with the UK College of Paramedics in disseminating his research and discussing the complex challenges that lie ahead.

In 2002 Professor McCann was invited to give evidence to the House of Lords Public Services Committee’s Inquiry into Access to Emergency Services. He has also supervised and examined several PhD studies into various aspects of the pre-hospital ambulance world, most recently Dr Joanne Mildenhall’s study of paramedics’ terrible ordeal during the COVID-19 pandemic.