Journal article
Paramedic Practitioners within ambulance services: views of Australian policymakers, health professionals, and consumers
BMC Health Services Research, Vol.25(1), pp.1-15
2025
PMCID: PMC11987361
PMID: 40211306
Abstract
Background: Globally, ambulance services face overwhelming primary and urgent care presentations that they are not structurally or culturally designed to manage efficiently or effectively. One mechanism to meet this consumer demand is the implementation of Paramedic Practitioner models with postgraduate qualifications in primary and urgent care. This study explores interest-holder views on reactive Paramedic Practitioner models within Australian ambulance services.
Methods A multidisciplinary team representing ambulance services was formed, including paramedicine, nursing, and medicine. A realist lens was adopted, and a qualitative research design using inductive thematic analysis employed. Semi-structured focus groups or interviews were conducted to obtain data from 56 participants. Interest-holders represented included consumers (n = 16), members of parliament (n = 3), government executives (n = 8), industry executives representing emergency medicine, general practice, nursing, and paramedicine (n = 6), ambulance service executives and medical directors (n = 7), researchers (n = 8), and practicing clinicians from paramedicine, nursing, and medicine (n = 8).
Results: Consumers described calling ambulance services for non-emergency complaints as they didn't know if their concern was an emergency or not, not wanting to go to hospital, and wanting someone to listen to them, reassure them, and then quickly solve their problem on the spot: they saw Paramedic Practitioners as aptly meeting this need. Among the healthcare professions, opinions were divided. Most participants were largely unfamiliar with Paramedic Practitioners or the evidence base supporting this model of practice, the concept received widespread support at the clinician level, and a small but avidly dissenting contingent of national policymakers opposed the models. Paramedic Practitioner models were considered to require broad support across the healthcare system to be effective. Policymakers were unsure which outcomes they wanted measured to evaluate models.
Conclusion: This study reports a wide range of interest-holder perspectives on the use of reactive Paramedic Practitioners within Australian ambulance services. Enablers (n = 10) and barriers (n = 10) to efficient and effective Paramedic Practitioner models were identified. Key outcomes of interest (n = 6) were identified, and these may be operationalised in future evaluations of reactive Paramedic Practitioner programs.
Details
- Title
- Paramedic Practitioners within ambulance services: views of Australian policymakers, health professionals, and consumers
- Authors
- Matt Wilkinson-Stokes (Corresponding Author) - The University of MelbourneCelene Y. L. Yap - The University of MelbourneDi Crellin - The University of MelbourneRay Bange - Central Queensland UniversityGeorge Braitberg - The University of MelbourneMarie Gerdtz - The University of Melbourne
- Publication details
- BMC Health Services Research, Vol.25(1), pp.1-15
- Publisher
- BioMed Central Ltd.
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1186/s12913-025-12614-y
- ISSN
- 1472-6963
- PMID
- 40211306; PMC11987361
- Copyright note
- © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Data Availability
- The Supplementary Materials contains three appendices. Appendix I contains a deidentified selection of quotes to illustrate themes and sub-themes. Full transcripts are not intended to be stored in a public repository as, despite undergoing deidentification, the highly unique positions of some interviewees means that reidentification remains a concern. Appendix II contains the open consumer recruitment advertisement used. Appendix III contains the initial iteration of the semi-structured focus group protocol.
- Grant note
- MWS’s research is generally supported by the Westpac Scholars’ fund, University of Melbourne’s PhD Award, and the Australian Government’s Research Training Program.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991127003702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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