Clinical Decision Making

Pre-hospital clinicians routinely make critical decisions about patient care in complex environments.

Decisions at key transitions entail considering a range of options, including conveyance to ED, specialist pathway centres and community care.

Increased demand for ambulance service care has impacted on the scope of clinical decision making by paramedics as the profile of calls has shifted from primarily emergency care decisions to now dealing with a wider range of primary care and psychosocial decisions.

Such decisions, where non-conveyance was an option, are more complex and time consuming, and require a high level of skill and support to minimise the potential for inappropriate non-conveyance.

High demand and strained ambulance service resources with increased handover delays from acute hospital settings has resulted in prolonged solo responder scene times.

As complexity of patient management increases it is important that solo RRV clinicians access shared decision support (when appropriate) and ensure personal resilience through access to health and wellbeing support.