Emergency care practitioners

ECPs have the skills to enable them to see, assess, treat and discharge patients, when appropriate.  Alternatively, they can directly refer patients to medical specialists and primary care services, enabling patients to receive the appropriate care, by the appropriate health care professional, at the point of need.

Eighty-five percent of emergency patients attended by ECPs do not require A&E attendance, and more than 50 percent are treated in their own homes.  This has significantly reduced the number of patients transported to A&E.

There are obvious benefits to patients:  they can be treated in their own homes or directly referred to primary care teams or to their own GP.  For the first time, patients can be seen by a specialist doctor without having to go to A&E first.  This means patients now don’t have to sit and wait in A&E, and families don’t have to come into hospital to visit.

There are benefits for staff as well. The ECP role provides an additional tier for career progression.  Whereas before there was no middle ground between paramedic and management, the ECP now bridges this gap and provides emergency medical technicians and paramedics with career progression opportunities even if they are not interested in going into management.

Many ECPs work in Primary Care out of hours, dealing with patients with some types of condition on behalf of doctors.

Excellent joint working with the primary care trusts (PCTs) has been established across the region, leading several of the PCTs to fund ECP schemes to work within their localities to meet the unscheduled emergency care needs of their communities.