Point of Care Testing by Paramedics (POCTPara)

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Point of Care Testing (POCT) for Advanced Practitioners (Paramedics) in urgent and emergency care: a single site feasibility study.

  • IRAS ID

    289975

  • Contact name

    Andrew Hodge

  • Contact email

    andrew.hodge@nhs.net

  • Sponsor organisation

    University of Bradford

  • Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier

    NCT05054049

  • Duration of Study in the UK

    0 years, 5 months, 30 days

  • Research summary

    Point of care testing (POCT) is described as a laboratory blood test conducted near the patient with a rapid result obtained through a portable analysing device. The advantage of using POCT testing is that blood tests that used to take several hours to wait for the results can be obtained within a few minutes while being with the patient.

    Over the past 10 years, POCT devices have been increasingly used outside of hospital by community healthcare services. Paramedics may be able to use these devices to make better decisions for their patients, including making more informed decisions about their care which may involve referring the patient to an appropriate specialist centre or deciding whether a patient can be more safely managed in the community.

    Most studies have looked at the use of POCT devices for very sick patients, with little research in the paramedic urgent and emergency care environment. However, before we decide if these devices may be useful for paramedic decision making, we want to evaluate if paramedics can use the devices in the mobile pre-hospital environment and interpret the test results.

    This feasibility study aims to work out if it is possible to train 7 senior paramedics (advanced practitioners) to use POCT devices and record how easy it is use them, what kind of patients they could use them for, the number of times they fail to get a result and the reasons why. This will help us to understand if a larger study could be developed to evaluate POCT device use by paramedics in terms of safety in decision making with patients calling 999 with less acute problems.

  • REC name

    North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    22/NE/0135

  • Date of REC Opinion

    10 Oct 2022

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion