Pre-hospital Care & Diabetics Patients

Pre-hospital Care & Diabetics Patients

Pre-hospital Care & Diabetics Patients

Introduction

The traditional function of the ambulance service has been to reply, treat and move patients to accident and crisis agencies, mostly because no other identified options are available. Key values delineated in the ambulance service rudimentary teaching manual, to save life, avert worsening, encourage recovery and move to hospital have served to underpin developments in pre-hospital care with debatable qualifications of success. (Lerner 2003) A plethora of pre-hospital care publications can be bewildering when seeking to work out if paramedics are productive, or ineffective when considering with certain situation, especially trauma and cardiac care. This could be partially due to study methodologies directed or restricted clues that constitute productive conclusions usually directed to interventions be they prehospital or otherwise. While the advantages of pre-hospital stabilization of critically hurt patients is contended by some as being inappropriate1-4 other ones for example Bissell and Eslinger5 accept as factual that there is a affirmative association between paramedic interventions and survival for cardiac apprehend patients as well as those pain foremost trauma. Whether paramedics make a distinction to the survivability or conclusion of patients continues part of a broader argument with more study on paramedic effectiveness needed.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this essay is to critically discuss a contemporary issue in the pre-hospital phase of patient care aiming to analyse the effectiveness of current practice and critically discuss how pre-hospital emergency and urgent care may be taken forward in current diabetes practice. There will be a focus on whether all diabetic patients need to be transported to hospital after suffering an episode of hypoglycaemia or hyperglycaemia and also if, after treatment and qualification for alternate care, patients can be offered more appropriate options. The author will look at pathways to suitable organisations or individuals which may benefit patients not conveyed to hospital. Recent initiatives and the development of alternative care pathways have resulted in improvement of care and Accident and Emergency (A&E) avoidance as ambulance staff now have the ability to initiate the beginning of treatments including immediate access to stroke units for Cerebrovascular Accident (CVA) patients and Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PPCI) for Myocardial Infarction (MI) patients. The author will try to determine whether a recently established diabetes care pathway will provide a similar service. Snooks (2010) states, 'Documents have stressed the importance of initial assessment and care or referral of patients so that needs are met in an optimal way' (Snooks, 2010, p.183).

Discussion

Diabetes has been chosen as the subject for this essay as it is encountered on a regular basis. A study by Walker et al. (2006) shows how after recording evidence for service development it was noted that 39% of emergency calls made to one ambulance service over a six month period were diabetes related (Walker et al. 2006, p.449). This highlights the need for intervention in the current diabetes call priority, response, assessment and referral methods. Diabetes has been identified as an area which ...