Role of nurses in pre-hospital emergency care

Abstract

In order to increase the quality of pre-hospital emergency care services, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare advocates a switch to clinically better educated professionals. The aim of this study is to assess the attitudes of ambulancemen, paramedics and nurses to each others' professional roles in prehospital emergency care. Ambulancemen and paramedics appreciate nurses' experience in anaesthesia, intensive care and cardiology, but do not see the nurse's role as being ‘team leader’. Both groups of professionals acknowledge the advantage of ambulance crew members having complementing skills, in order to improve the service. There is some rivalry between nurses and ambulancemen and paramedics. However, the increasing number of nurses in pre-hospital emergency care is contributing to the quality of the service by raising the competence level of the team as a whole.