Health Education England (HEE) have developed a new pathway to help paramedics advance in their careers.
Their new document - First Contact Practitioners and Advanced Practitioners in Primary Care: (Paramedic) A Roadmap to Practice - outlines the skills and attributes needed to help paramedics become first contact practitioners (FCPs) or advanced practitioners (APs).
- FCPs are diagnostic clinicians qualified to master’s level who work to support GPs as part of an integrated team.
- APs are also clinicians qualified to a master’s level, but with a higher level of expertise working across the entire scope of advanced practice.
FCPs and APs come from a number of allied health professions, and apart from being highly-skilled in their own area of expertise, are trained to consider a person’s total health needs and work within a multi-profession team.
Working in this way can benefit both patient care and outcomes through a range of skills, including improved critical thinking, decision-making and better teamwork.
HEE’s new ‘roadmap to practice’ provides paramedics with a clear educational pathway should they wish to work in primary care.
It also helps set out the supervision and governance necessary and giving training guidance for supervisors.
Beverley Harden, Allied Health Professions Lead, Health Education England, said: “This document provides a clear training pathway for paramedics into primary care, and will help to provide a pipeline of highly-skilled staff to meet the future needs of patients.
“In addition, it consolidates our work to ensure our much-valued paramedics have a clear route to continue to expand their skills and professional development.”
Suzanne Rastrick, Chief Allied Health Professions Officer for England, added: “The paramedic profession will make an increasingly vital contribution as part of the primary care workforce.
“The paramedic roadmap supports both the optimal professional development of paramedics and also their effective deployment in primary care. I am delighted to support this work.”
