title: Initial experience in setting up a medical student first responder scheme in South Central England.
abstract: Prehospital emergency medicine (PHEM) is a recently recognised subspecialty of emergency medicine, and anaesthetics, intensive care and acute medicine, in the UK, and yet it receives little to no mention in many undergraduate medical curricula. However, there is growing interest in PHEM among medical students and junior doctors. Several programmes are in existence across the UK that serve to provide teaching and exposure of prehospital care to medical students and junior doctors. However, relatively few students are able to gain significant first-hand experience of treating patients in the prehospital phase. In this short report, we discuss our experience of launching the student first responder (SFR) scheme across three counties in the Thames Valley. Medical students are trained by the regional ambulance service and respond to life-threatening medical emergencies in an ambulance response vehicle. The scheme is likely to benefit the ambulance service by providing a wider pool of trained volunteer first responders able to attend to emergency calls, to benefit patients by providing a quick response at their time of need, and to benefit medical students by providing first-hand experience of medical emergencies in the community. In its first 15 months of operation, SFRs were dispatched to 343 incidents. This scheme can serve as a training model for other ambulance services and medical schools across the UK.
authors.affiliation: Severn Foundation School, UK University of Oxford Medical School, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: William H
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Seligman
authors.affiliation: University of Oxford Medical School, Oxford, UK Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London, UK.
authors.forename: Sameer
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ganatra
authors.affiliation: South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: England
authors.affiliation: South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, Oxford, UK.
authors.forename: John J M
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Black
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000552:Ambulances; D004632:Emergency Medical Services; D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000193:education*; D004739:England; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D016730:Program Development; D015397:Program Evaluation; D013337:Students, Medical; D000078329:Workforce
keywords: prehospital care; prehospital care, basic ambulance care; prehospital care, doctors in PHC; prehospital care, first responders