Community First Responders’ role in current and future rural health
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Community First Responders’ role in the current and future rural health and care workforce
IRAS ID
277205
Contact name
Aloysius Niroshan Siriwardena
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Lincoln
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
Community First Responders (CFRs) are trained members of the public, lay people or off-duty healthcare staff who volunteer to provide first aid. They help ambulance services to provide emergency care for people at home or in public places. CFRs are vital in isolated rural areas. CFRs are broadly perceived to be positive, but we need evidence on how they contribute to rural health services and how they improve care for rural communities.
Patient and public involvement (PPI)members were involved in our previous research on CFRs and developing this proposal. They will be involved throughout as steering group members, by commenting on findings, making recommendations and communicating findings to professionals and the public.
We aim to develop recommendations for rural CFRs, by exploring their contribution to rural care and exploring the potential for CFRs to provide new services.We will do this in the following steps:
1. Analyse records from six ambulance services to see: how many people CFRs attended and what happened to the patient when the ambulance arrived.
2. Evaluate benefits and costs of CFRs attending rural emergencies.
3. Interview patients/relatives, ambulance staff, GPs, funders, CFRs and CFR leads about their views on rural CFR current and potential future roles. Interviews will also explore with CFRs and CFR leads about how to achieve safe, high quality care.
4. Combine this knowledge to develop recommendations for change, who will be involved and how services should change to solve the most pressing problems for rural communities they serve.
5. Present recommendations to a workshop of experts and public to agree priorities for future development.
We will feed back recommendations to each ambulance service and provide reports, articles, presentations, blogs, infographics and social media publicising findings to public and professional audiences.
We will start 1st February 2020 and complete within 30 months.REC name
London - Hampstead Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/LO/0317
Date of REC Opinion
19 Mar 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion