ABSTRACT

Introduction: During the past 40 years the ambulance service in Sweden has evolved from mainly being a source of transport to today’s high-tech caring facilities that enable qualified care to start already in the patient’s home. This first level of care is now provided by registered nurses and registered nurses with specialist training in pre hospital care.

At the same time as the care provided is becoming more advanced, results from studies demonstrate that the amount of dispatches to patients that lack the need for ambulance care and transport is increasing. Nurses in pre-hospital care possess the knowledge, training and authority to perform an initial assessment of patients and also treat patients according to local and national guidelines. After the treatment it would sometimes be possible for the patients to remain at home without having to use ambulance transport to an emergency department or in other cases find other means of transport to hospital. Today this is, in Sweden, an accepted standard for by district nurses who are mandated to refer, even after only telephone consulting, the patients to self-care. Ambulance nurses lack this according to present guidelines. If a patient is to remain on-scene or home, a strict protocol of documentation has to be filled-in as well as the ambulance crew being in contact with a doctor. In this study, the authors visualize what patient categories stay on-scene or home, what types of examinations was performed and if the patient safety is ensured.

Objective: The aim of this study was to visualize patient safety when the patient is not transported to hospital by ambulance.

Method: A quantitative, descriptive and retrospective design and analysis of 137 ambulance medical records where the patient was left at home after the initial assessment.

Results: The results demonstrate that the patients who wish to remain on-scene have various different conditions. The majority stayed home at their own request and without any further treatment being performed by the pre hospital care provider. In 28 per cent the patients received some kind of treatment, and in some of the cases patients refused ambulance transport even when the ambulance nurse strongly recommended this. This study also demonstrated that, in many cases, the patients´ history as well as the patients´ status were incomplete documented. The ambulance nurse performed, in median, four different examinations on the patients. In more than half of the cases the nurses had documented that the patient had some kind of attendance. Counseling was given both to patients and sometimes to the patients’ family member.  A lack of sufficient documentation in the patients’ medical record was found and also that consultation of a doctor only has been completed in 15 per cent. Of a total of 137 patients there were three patients who called for an ambulance within the following 24 hours. One of these became aggressive during the first time of visit, and therefore the nurse wasn´t able to examine her thoroughly.  The two other patients do not differ regarding the extent of the examination compared to those who didn´t call for ambulance again.

Conclusion:  Although this paper demonstrates that patients´ safety has not been compromised in the examined records, the authors recommend further studies on patient safety when patient remain on-scene. There is also a need for more specific and valid indicators. Documentation and adherence to guidelines were, however, in this study found to be insufficient.

 Key words: patient safety, ambulance, patient, specialist nurse in pre hospital care science, nurse, transport, journal.