Members of the CaHRU team including Despina Laparidou, Dr Viet-Hai Phung, Dr Gupteswar Patel, Dr Mehrshad Hosseini and Prof Niro Siriwardena together with PhD student Betul Yalcin, and BMedSci students from Lincoln Medical School, Jade Livingstone and Malaika Kapadia, attended the 999 Emergency Medical Services Research Forum conference in Manchester on 20-21 June 2023 to present research conducted by the team in collaboration with partners over the past year. In all we delivered a keynote, preconference workshop on ‘Community First Responders’ role in ambulance services – developing evidence-based policy guidance’ (Prof Siriwardena and Dr Gupteswar Patel), elevator pitch (Betul Yalcin) and 11 posters led by or in collaboration with CaHRU staff.
We presented four posters from the NIHR study on Community First Responders in the current and future rural health care workforce including, ‘Consensus on innovations and future change agenda in Community First Responder (CFR) schemes in England: a national Nominal Group Technique study’ (Dr Gupteswar Patel), ‘CFRs – their identity and relationship with patients and the ambulance service: a qualitative interview study’ (Dr Viet-Hai Phung), ‘Effectiveness of Falls Response Partnership in Emergency Medical Services in Lincolnshire, UK: an economic evaluation (Dr Mehrshad Hosseini), ‘Power dynamics in out-of-hospital emergency care: understanding the relationship between Community First Responders and Ambulance Paramedics in England – qualitative study’ (Malaika Kapadia – a medical student).
There were three posters from the Researching Emergency Ambulances to Care Homes study including, ‘A qualitative study of ambulance staff experiences of dealing with emergencies in care homes’ Despina Laparidou), ‘Predictors of care home resident conveyance to hospital by ambulance services during medical emergencies’, and ‘Variations in the number of ambulance attendances to care homes before and during Covid-19 pandemic: an interrupted time series analysis’ (Niro Siriwardena).
There were two further posters from work with Lincoln medical students, ‘Investigating factors that affect mortality in patients presenting with head injuries to Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS): cross sectional study (Jade Livingstone – a medical student), ‘Characteristics of patients presenting to ambulance services with mental health conditions before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: cross-sectional study’ (Niro Siriwardena on behalf of Imogen Sidaway – a medical student).
We also presented work from international collaborations including, ‘Indicators for avoidable emergency medical service calls: Mapping of Paramedic Clinical Impression Codes to Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions and Mental Health Conditions in the UK and Canada’ (Niro Siriwardena on behalf of Prof Gina Agarwal), ‘Beyond the emergency’: novel uses of ambulance data to identify vulnerable communities and improve pre-hospital care’ (Dr Harriet Moore from the School of Geography). Harriet was awarded the prize for best use of data. Finally, Betul Yalcin, a CaHRU PhD student, won best elevator for her doctoral work on ‘Ethnic differences in prehospital conveyance in the East Midlands Region of the UK: a retrospective cross-sectional study’.
Overall, it was our most successful showing at 999EMS and reflects the scale and depth of research that the team have been undertaking over the past year.